Hav­ing qui­et­ly launched its own mR­NA vac­cine ef­forts against the nov­el coro­n­avirus to match the high­er pro­file cam­paigns of Mod­er­na and Cure­Vac, Ger­many’s BioN­Tech has of­fered a glimpse on its progress as it un­veils an al­liance with a promi­nent Chi­nese play­er.

Ugur Sahin

Fo­s­un Phar­ma will team up with BioN­Tech to con­duct tri­als of its Covid-19 vac­cine, BNT162, in Chi­na. To get on board, Fo­s­un bought $50 mil­lion worth of BioN­Tech eq­ui­ty $BN­TX and promised up to $85 mil­lion more in pay­ments.

In a sep­a­rate state­ment, BioN­Tech said it plans to ini­ti­ate clin­i­cal test­ing in late April, rolling out a glob­al de­vel­op­ment pro­gram in Eu­rope (start­ing in Ger­many), the US and Chi­na.

Shares surged 39.02% to $43 in pre-mar­ket trad­ing, buck­ing the down­ward trend in a tur­bu­lent mar­ket (the Nas­daq Biotech In­dex is al­so trad­ing up).

While Fo­s­un has rights to com­mer­cial­ize the re­sult­ing vac­cine in Chi­na, BioN­Tech is still ex­plor­ing what to do in the rest of the world. It’s in “ad­vanced dis­cus­sions” with Pfiz­er around that — echo­ing com­ments made by its phar­ma part­ner ear­li­er this month.

The deal marks the first pub­lic an­nounce­ments BioN­Tech has made on Pro­ject Light­speed, its de­vel­op­ment pro­gram in re­sponse to the vi­ral in­fec­tion that’s fast en­gulf­ing the world, since qui­et­ly dis­clos­ing the project ini­ti­a­tion in a Feb­ru­ary SEC fil­ing. As of Mon­day morn­ing, world­wide cas­es are edg­ing to­ward 170,000, with mul­ti­ple Eu­ro­pean coun­tries and parts of the US now on lock­down.

Like fel­low Ger­man biotech Cure­Vac — whom the US gov­ern­ment has re­port­ed­ly tried to lure in­to mov­ing state­side — BioN­Tech’s vac­cine ap­proach in­volves us­ing mR­NA to trick the body in­to pro­duc­ing a ver­sion of the SARS-CoV-2, which would then in­cite an im­mune re­sponse. Its man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner Poly­mun will be in charge of pro­duc­ing a glob­al sup­ply out of fa­cil­i­ties in Eu­rope.

“In ad­di­tion, we are work­ing on a nov­el ther­a­peu­tics ap­proach for those pa­tients who have al­ready been in­fect­ed – we plan to dis­close more on that ef­fort in the com­ing weeks,” Ugur Sahin, founder and CEO, said in a state­ment.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

While the US biosimilars industry has generally been a disappointment since its inception, with FDA approving 33 biosimilars since 2015, just a fraction of those have immediately followed their approvals with launches. And more than a handful of biosimilars for two of the biggest blockbusters of all time — AbbVie’s Humira and Amgen’s Enbrel — remain approved by FDA but still have not launched because of legal settlements.

As President Biden’s Build Back Better Act — and, with it, potentially the Democrats’ last shot at major drug pricing reforms in the foreseeable future — remains on life support, the Congressional Budget Office isn’t helping their case.

The CBO last week released a new slide deck, outlining an update to its model on how Medicare negotiations might take a bite out of new drugs making it to market. The new model estimates a 10% long-term reduction in the number of new drugs, whereas a previous CBO report from August estimated that 8% fewer new drugs will enter the market over 30 years.