Pfiz­er’s and Mod­er­na’s mR­NA vac­cines to pre­vent Covid-19 are of­ten con­sid­ered equals in many re­spects. Both have shown strong pro­tec­tion from the virus, with lim­it­ed side ef­fects or safe­ty con­cerns among the hun­dreds of mil­lions who have now re­ceived them.

But in its sec­ond quar­ter earn­ings call Thurs­day, Mod­er­na re­vealed how the two are di­verg­ing when it comes to vac­cine sales, as Mod­er­na’s ex­pec­ta­tions for 2021 to­tal about $20 bil­lion, based on the ex­pect­ed man­u­fac­ture of be­tween 800 mil­lion and 1 bil­lion dos­es. Pfiz­er said last week it ex­pects about $33 bil­lion in 2021 Covid vac­cine sales on 2.1 bil­lion dos­es, al­though that amount may in­crease to about 3 bil­lion dos­es.

The quick start for Pfiz­er may even out a lit­tle more, but not by much: In 2022, Mod­er­na says it al­ready has signed con­tracts for about $12 bil­lion in vac­cine sales, with op­tions for $8 bil­lion more, and the man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty to make be­tween 2 and 3 bil­lion dos­es next year. By con­trast, Pfiz­er CEO Al­bert Bourla said the com­pa­ny is ready to make about 4 bil­lion dos­es in 2022, al­though the Big Phar­ma has yet to project any 2022 sales fig­ures, a spokesper­son con­firmed.

In terms of vac­cine dose pric­ing, both com­pa­nies have seen in­creas­es in the US, and the EU, even as they both of­fer less ex­pen­sive ver­sions of their vac­cines for low- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries.

Pfiz­er’s vac­cine price rose from $19.50 per dose to about $24 per dose in this lat­est US gov­ern­ment pur­chase of 200 mil­lion dos­es.

Mod­er­na said Thurs­day its US gov­ern­ment price has risen slight­ly from about $15 per dose (for the first 100 mil­lion dos­es) to $16.50 each (for the next 400 mil­lion dos­es), which takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the gov­ern­ment funds via BAR­DA to un­der­write the firm’s Phase III tri­al for the vac­cine. High­er in­come ex-US coun­tries start with a price range of $32 to $37 per dose, Mod­er­na added. But some­times there are dis­counts based on vol­ume, or for low­er- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries, in­clud­ing sales to CO­V­AX, which Mod­er­na said are priced sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er than dos­es for the US gov­ern­ment.

Both Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na are al­so de­vel­op­ing their Covid-19 vac­cine boost­er strate­gies, even as the CDC and FDA have said such boost­ers are not nec­es­sary yet, and as the WHO calls on de­vel­oped coun­tries to not pro­vide boost­ers un­til at least the end of Sep­tem­ber.

Mod­er­na pres­i­dent Stephen Hoge said on the earn­ings call the com­pa­ny be­lieves boost­ers will be need­ed be­fore win­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly due to the Delta vari­ant. Clin­i­cal da­ta ap­pear to sup­port a 50 μg of the Mod­er­na vac­cine boost­er, the com­pa­ny said, al­though it will wait for 100 μg da­ta com­ing in the next sev­er­al weeks to con­firm the se­lec­tion of 50 μg as a boost­er dose be­fore fil­ing for EUA.

Pfiz­er said it ex­pects a boost­er shot EUA fil­ing as ear­ly as this month: “Pend­ing reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval, we al­so plan to start an im­muno­genic­i­ty and safe­ty study in Au­gust to eval­u­ate an up­dat­ed ver­sion of our vac­cine specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to tar­get the Delta vari­ant,” Pfiz­er CSO Mikael Dol­sten said last week on its earn­ings call.

Mod­er­na al­so said in its Q&A at the end of its earn­ings call it may jump fur­ther in­to the space of gene edit­ing. As an in­no­va­tor in the worlds of lipid nanopar­ti­cles and mR­NA, Hoge said that “it’s the right time for us to ex­pand in that di­rec­tion,” point­ing to gene edit­ing.

“On the gene edit­ing ques­tion, we do have, as you know, pro­grams that tar­get the liv­er. But as we’ve pre­sent­ed at pre­vi­ous sci­ence days and even to­day, we have a plat­form tech­nol­o­gy that al­so we think al­lows us to get in broad­ly in­to the im­mune sys­tem and par­tic­u­lar­ly hematopoi­et­ic stem cells. And so what you’ll — where we imag­ine our strong suit to be is in de­liv­er­ing nu­cle­ic acid tech­nolo­gies to those ar­eas. Of course, as we look to ex­pand­ing in gene edit­ing, You’ll see us look to those tech­nolo­gies that we’ve got the most ex­pe­ri­ence with first and then bring­ing a range of dif­fer­ent pay­loads to — in­to our ca­pa­bil­i­ties,” Hoge said.

J&J is joining the movement in pharma to double down on risky but high-growth drugs and devices while hiving off huge consumer divisions. CEO Alex Gorsky says that sometime in the next 18 to 24 months they’ll be splitting the company into 2 different operations, dividing the largest conglomerate in healthcare.

Just as Merck and Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline before, which followed similar strategies, the move will put a beacon on the R&D side of the business, where new drug development — and the high margins they can deliver — will be critical to the new company’s success.

Having sent 1.5 billion Covid-19 vaccines around the world on a not-for-profit basis, AstraZeneca says it’s time to move into “modest profitability.”

While the priority is to deliver all the “pandemic doses” — a total of 3 billion are set to be delivered by the end of the year — AstraZeneca expects to be taking new orders in Q4, leading to a blend in sales.

“Don’t expect massive profitability, which is sometimes the case for other vaccine makers,” Ruud Dobber, head of the biopharmaceuticals business unit, told Endpoints News.

It’s almost time for the FDA to make a decision on mavacamten, the myosin inhibitor at the center of Bristol Myers Squibb’s $13 billion MyoKardia buyout. With a Jan. 28 PDUFA date looming, the pharma giant is now taking the wraps off some long-term data it hopes will bolster the drug’s case for approval.

Heart patients who received mavacamten in a cohort of the long-term MAVA-LTE study saw significant reductions in median levels of a hormone called NT-proBNP (58% at week 24 and 67% at week 48), Bristol Myers reported at this year’s American Heart Association conference. Higher than normal NT-proBNP levels are indicative of heart failure.