Pfiz­er is in­vest­ing some mon­ey in its Ly­me dis­ease part­ner biotech as the pair gears up for a Phase III study.

The Big Phar­ma chipped in $95 mil­lion in eq­ui­ty for Val­ne­va, good enough for an 8.1% stake in the French vac­cine mak­er. Mon­day’s deal comes af­ter the two com­pa­nies ini­tial­ly agreed to de­vel­op the can­di­date in April 2020 and a few months af­ter the pro­gram read out Phase II pe­di­atric re­sults.

Kathrin Jansen

“As the ge­o­graph­ic foot­print of Ly­me dis­ease widens, the med­ical need for vac­ci­na­tion be­comes even more im­per­a­tive,” Pfiz­er’s head of vac­cines R&D Kathrin Jansen said in a state­ment. “We are ex­cit­ed to con­tin­ue part­ner­ing with Val­ne­va on the de­vel­op­ment of VLA15 and look for­ward to work­ing to­geth­er to progress the pro­gram.”

The eq­ui­ty deal val­ued Val­ne­va’s stock price at $10.02 per share. In­vestors re­act­ed warm­ly to the news, with Val­ne­va shares $VALN jump­ing 83% while the mar­ket was closed for the June­teenth hol­i­day, af­ter drop­ping 13% in the fi­nal min­utes of last Fri­day’s trad­ing ses­sion.

On top of the eq­ui­ty fi­nanc­ing, Pfiz­er and Val­ne­va are al­so slight­ly amend­ing their orig­i­nal Ly­me dis­ease vac­cine deal. Val­ne­va will now take on 40% of the re­main­ing shared de­vel­op­ment costs in­stead of 30%, and Pfiz­er will pay roy­al­ties rang­ing from 14% to 22% in­stead of start­ing at 19%. Pfiz­er will add an­oth­er $100 mil­lion in po­ten­tial sales mile­stones as well.

Val­ne­va had made most of its head­lines in the last cou­ple years for its work in Covid-19 vac­cines, promis­ing to de­vel­op an al­ter­na­tive shot to the wide­ly used Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na and As­traZeneca jabs. Though Val­ne­va’s shot even­tu­al­ly got across the fin­ish line in the UK, the vac­cine like­ly will not be avail­able in Eu­rope much longer af­ter the EU de­cid­ed to ter­mi­nate its pur­chase agree­ment last month.

And last week, the com­pa­ny said chances of re­viv­ing the con­tract are slim, send­ing its shares plung­ing.

But the Ly­me dis­ease pro­gram has rolled right along, pass­ing a Phase II test for adults last Sep­tem­ber and achiev­ing its goals in an­oth­er Phase II study in April. Funds from Mon­day’s eq­ui­ty fi­nanc­ing are ex­pect­ed to go to­ward the piv­otal Phase III tri­al, which will like­ly launch in the third quar­ter, the com­pa­nies said.

While European companies, including BioNTech, are focused on increasing vaccine access to African countries by setting up vaccine manufacturing facilities, the European Union is looking westward to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Speaking at a press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pédro Sanchez, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU is launching a new initiative for vaccines and medicines manufacturing in Latin America, to get drugs to Latin America and the Caribbean faster.

After attacks from activist investors and disappointing returns on share prices, Radius Health has now agreed to new ownership, a direction resulting in leaving the Nasdaq.

Radius Health, a biotech out of Massachusetts with one approved product in its arsenal, announced Thursday morning that it agreed to be acquired by two VC firms: Gurnet Point Capital and Patient Square Capital. The deal, worth around $890 million, will include debt assumption and the payout of $1 CVR per share for investors. And on top of that, OrbiMed is providing debt financing.