Pfiz­er has joined the ranks of drug­mak­ers look­ing to com­bine sea­son­al vac­cines, re­veal­ing new da­ta on Wednes­day sug­gest­ing its fresh­ly ap­proved 20-va­lent pneu­mo­coc­cal vac­cine can be ad­min­is­tered at the same time as the flu shot in old­er adults.

When re­ceived to­geth­er in a group of vol­un­teers 65 years and old­er, re­spons­es elicit­ed by Pre­vnar 20 and the sea­son­al flu vac­cine were non-in­fe­ri­or to those elicit­ed by the vac­cines when re­ceived a month apart, Pfiz­er said, point­ing to new topline da­ta from a Phase III study. The safe­ty pro­file of Pre­vnar was sim­i­lar when the vac­cines were tak­en to­geth­er ver­sus apart.

“Both Pre­vnar 20 and the in­fluen­za vac­cine are im­por­tant for help­ing pro­tect adults against pneu­mo­coc­cal pneu­mo­nia and the flu re­spec­tive­ly; how­ev­er, vac­ci­na­tion rates de­cline when some­one needs to make mul­ti­ple ap­point­ments to re­ceive these vac­cines,” Pfiz­er Vac­cines CMO and se­nior VP Luis Jo­dar said in a state­ment.

Luis Jo­dar

Pfiz­er isn’t the on­ly com­pa­ny chas­ing this two-in-one ap­proach. Ear­li­er this month, Mod­er­na an­nounced it’s de­vel­op­ing a sin­gle vac­cine that com­bines a boost­er dose of its Covid-19 shot with its ex­per­i­men­tal flu shot. CEO Stéphane Ban­cel told End­points News back in April that the goal is to ex­plore can­di­dates that pro­tect against the flu, SARS-CoV-2, RSV and hu­man metap­neu­movirus (hM­PV).

“This is re­al­ly the big is­sue. If you could have a prod­uct that had high-ef­fi­ca­cy in Covid, high-ef­fi­ca­cy in flu and high-ef­fi­ca­cy in RSV, you will have a mas­sive im­pact on pub­lic health, and hos­pi­tal­iza­tion and mor­tal­i­ty of el­der­ly,” he said at the time.

No­vavax — whose ex­per­i­men­tal Covid-19 vac­cine has been hit with mul­ti­ple de­lays — al­so launched an ear­ly-stage tri­al this month test­ing a com­bi­na­tion of its in­fluen­za and Covid can­di­dates, and ex­pects da­ta in the first half of next year. Glax­o­SmithK­line, on the oth­er hand, knows this space well. The phar­ma won an ap­proval for its Kin­rix shot — the first com­bi­na­tion vac­cine to of­fer pro­tec­tion against diph­the­ria, tetanus, per­tus­sis and po­lio — back in 2008.

Pfiz­er says more da­ta from its pneu­mo­coc­cal and flu com­bi­na­tion tri­al — which in­clud­ed 1,727 par­tic­i­pants — are com­ing in the fu­ture. But in the mean­time, it has an­oth­er tri­al in the works ex­plor­ing the co-ad­min­is­tra­tion of Pre­vnar 20 and a boost­er dose of its Covid-19 vac­cine, Comir­naty, in adults 65 and old­er.

Pre­vnar 20 was ap­proved back in June, beat­ing Mer­ck and its 15-va­lent shot to the punch. The vac­cine cov­ers all 13 strains that its pre­de­ces­sor Pre­vnar 13 does, plus 8, 10A, 11A, 12F, 15B, 22F and 33F.

There are cur­rent­ly two main types of pneu­mo­coc­cal vac­cine: pneu­mo­coc­cal con­ju­gate vac­cines (PCV) and pneu­mo­coc­cal poly­sac­cha­ride vac­cines (PPSV). Both con­tain poly­sac­cha­rides tak­en from serotypes of S. pneu­mo­niae bac­te­ria, which cause pa­tients’ im­mune sys­tems to de­vel­op an­ti­bod­ies that will lat­er rec­og­nize that poly­sac­cha­ride.

Mer­ck came out with its 23-va­lent PPSV, Pneu­movax 23, back in 1983. How­ev­er, PPSVs have been shown to have poor per­for­mance in younger chil­dren. As a so­lu­tion, drug­mak­ers have de­vel­oped “con­ju­gat­ed” vac­cines, in which the poly­sac­cha­rides are at­tached to a car­ri­er pro­tein.

As Mer­ck and Pfiz­er duke it out, a 24-va­lent can­di­date is in the mak­ing that hopes to top­ple them both. Vax­cyte, for­mer­ly known as SutroVax, is in ear­ly de­vel­op­ment with VAX-24 and ex­pects to file an IND in the first half of 2022.

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

Another biotech standing on shaky financial legs has fallen victim to the bears.

Merck partner 4D Pharma has reported that a key lender, Oxford Finance, shoved the UK company into administration after calling in a $14 million loan they couldn’t immediately make good on. Trading in their stock was halted with a market cap that had fallen to a mere £30 million.

“Despite the very difficult prevailing market conditions,” 4D reported on Friday, the biotech had been making progress on finding some new financing and turned to Oxford with an alternative late on Thursday and then again Friday morning.

Amidst recently broader vaccine manufacturing initiatives from the EU and European companies, the G7 summit in the mountains of Bavaria has brought about some positive news for closing vaccine and medical product manufacturing gaps around the globe.

According to a statement from the White House, the G7 leaders have formally launched the partnership for global infrastructure, PGII. The effort will aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to deliver infrastructure projects in several sectors including the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space.

Some Celgene shareholders aren’t happy with how Bristol Myers Squibb’s takeover went down.

On Friday, a New York federal judge ruled that they have a case against the pharma giant, denying a request to dismiss allegations that it purposely slow-rolled Breyanzi’s approval to avoid paying out $6.4 billion in contingent value rights (CVR).

When Bristol Myers put down $74 billion to scoop up Celgene back in 2019, liso-cel — the CAR-T lymphoma treatment now marketed as Breyanzi — was supposedly one of the centerpieces of the deal. After going back and forth on negotiations for about six months, BMS put $6.4 billion into a CVR agreement that required an FDA approval for Zeposia, Breyanzi and Abecma, each by an established date.

Two and a half years after setting out on another foray into oncology R&D, a biotech headed by David Hung — of Medivation fame — has run into its first setback.

San Francisco-based Nuvation Bio announced early Monday the FDA placed a partial clinical hold on a Phase I dose-escalation study of NUV-422, its CDK inhibitor program for certain types of solid tumors. The trial began enrolling patients in December 2020, and, according to Nuvation, researchers were in the middle of exploring dose escalation and defining the maximum dose tolerable in patients.