After defeating established vaccine manufacturers to produce the first sera against Covid-19, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNtech set a new target: influenza vaccines.
The companies say the new messenger RNA technology used for the first time on a large scale in their vaccines against Covid will allow flu vaccines to be developed faster to match the ever-changing annual strains and improve efficacy rates.
The possible large-scale entry of these giants into the flu vaccine market has also forced traditional companies such as Sanofi, Seqirus and GlaxoSmithKline to accelerate their research on mRNA alternatives, even though these companies claim that their existing products would could still prove superior.
According to the Fortune Business Insights research group, this already large market is expected to grow by 7.2% per year, reaching $ 10.7 billion in 2028. Another forecast puts the market at $ 17 billion by 2030.
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As people became more aware of the threat of respiratory viruses – and the potential of vaccines to protect them – the revenues of the top three flu vaccine manufacturers increased by 23 to 35% between 2019 and 2020. About 40 percent of Sanofi’s revenue from 6 Billions of euros in vaccines last year came from flu shots, reports the Financial Times.
Currently, every year, the World Health Organization has to predict which strains of the flu will circulate next winter. With the current flu vaccines, they have been making this choice since February – to give manufacturers time to make traditional vaccines, which require significant time.
MRNA technology, which uses the genetic code of the virus, is much faster than older technologies. This would allow a vaccine to be developed much later in the year. Thus, researchers would know much better what strain of flu is circulating in that year and could adapt the vaccine.
Moderna announced the first data showing that its candidate vaccine against influenza increased the level of antibodies in a phase 1 study, even for the participants who received the lowest dose. Pfizer and BioNTech began enrolling participants in their Phase 1 study in September.
Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna, told investors that the vaccine candidate is just a starting point.
He is a “big supporter” of the potential benefits of combining flu and Covid vaccines in a single injection.
The mRNA could be used to combine a vaccine against the four annual influenza strains considered a priority by the WHO, the current variant of Sars CoV-2 and the respiratory syncytial virus, which can be serious for infants and the elderly. Moderna tested the inclusion of six different mRNA sequences in a single dose in a cytomegalovirus vaccine.
“We believe that people will not take three different doses. One injection for pan-respiratory protection seems to be the right answer, “Hoge told FT.
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