Affini­vax, Astel­las be­gin clin­i­cal quest to beat Pfiz­er's Go­liath with a new kind of pneu­mo­coc­cal vac­cine

Days af­ter the FDA blessed Mer­ck’s ef­fort to chal­lenge Pfiz­er’s mega-block­buster Pre­vnar 13 with a break­through des­ig­na­tion, Affini­vax is mak­ing the leap in­to the clin­ic with its own take on the pneu­mo­coc­cal vac­cine.

It’s no small feat for a biotech play­er that got start­ed with $4 mil­lion in seed fund­ing from the Gates Foun­da­tion in 2014 and has been run­ning pure­ly on grants as well as part­ner­ship dol­lars from Astel­las — which is shoul­der­ing much of clin­i­cal work in the Phase I/II study.

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