ranking in the pharmaceutical field is a tough battle of speed mixed with ability.
On October 17, the pharmaceutical industry media Fierce Pharma sorted out the top ten vaccine manufacturers in the world based on its turnover. Pfizer , BioNTech and China Sinovac became the top three on this list.
This is the first time that Chinese vaccine companies rank so high in the world.
years ago, the top of this list was: UK GlaxoSmithKline , Merck, Sanofi in the United States, Pfizer in the United States - the "four giants" in the vaccine industry.
A new crown epidemic that swept the world has reshuffled the vaccine industry. Fierce Pharma commented on this year's ranking: Five years and the COVID-19 pandemic have reshaped an industry.
Among these companies on the list, the most frustrated one of is probably GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). In the past five years, GSK not only failed to catch up with the new crown vaccine market, but instead retreated in the field that it is good at and has long since disappeared from its former style.
Top ten vaccine companies ranking reshaping, in fact, the main behind it is the competition between two products: the new crown vaccine and the HPV vaccine .
In fact, GSK has not missed the trend whether it is the new crown vaccine or the HPV vaccine, but GSK has not been able to gain an advantage in both of these two major varieties. This has led to the top GSK, which was the king of vaccines in 2017, falling to the sixth place in the industry.
As the COVID-19 pandemic is expanding rapidly around the world, GSK has reached cooperation in vaccine research and development with many companies, among which the most influential is its cooperation with Sanofi . In April 2020, GSK and Sanofi announced the news that the two sides will cooperate to develop the new crown vaccine.
At that time, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their cooperation more than a month ago. What was faster was Kexing Bio-—the new crown vaccine has begun phase II clinical trials.
GSK has not deeply involved in vaccine development, and only provides Sanofi with an adjuvant system.
Not only is the cooperation with Sanofi not deep enough, GSK's operation methods in the new crown vaccine are basically the same: be careful and stop trying it lightly.
In February 2020, GSK and Epidemic Prevention and Innovation Alliance cooperated to promote the research and development of new coronavirus vaccine ;
At the same time, GSK and China's Triple Leaf Crabbit In the cooperation of biopharmaceuticals, jointly promotes the research and development of new crown vaccines;
In July of the same year, GSK stated that he would cooperate with Canadian pharmaceutical companies to develop plant-based crown vaccines...
These cooperations, GSK only provides vaccine adjuvants.
It is understood that the role of vaccine adjuvant in vaccines is mainly to reduce the amount of antigen and the number of vaccinations per dose of vaccine, while not reducing the effectiveness of vaccines. But not all vaccines require adjuvants.
GSK only provides adjuvants, which actually represents GSK's judgment on 's new crown business: If the vaccine is successful, the results can be shared; if it fails, the loss will not be too great.
As a well-known pharmaceutical company in the field of vaccines, GSK's cautiousness in vaccine research and development is not without reason. The development of vaccines for sudden epidemics usually bears extremely high risks. In addition to the risk of R&D failure, the high number of sudden epidemics has also made many companies have to think twice.
003 when SARS virus spread, GSK did not participate deeply. That year, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was so anxious that they convened vaccine companies such as GSK, Merck , Wyeth, Baxter , Johnson & Johnson , and forced them to submit SARS vaccine development plans. GSK had to announce on April 30 that it would cooperate with the French Institute of Biology to develop SARS vaccines.
In China, Sinovac has been silently developing SARS vaccines. Zhong Nanshan once said in an interview: "It is very hard to do SARS vaccine. It will take 2006 to complete the entire identification. but there are no patients, so I won't do it."
Kexing spent a lot of money that year and its R&D investment was wasted, but finally it ushered in its highlight moment more than 10 years later.
In the face of the new crown epidemic, GSK may not care about money the most, but is more confident in its own adjuvant system.
In September 2005, GSK acquired ID Biomedical and obtained the latter's influenza vaccine pipeline; almost the same period, GSK acquired Wyeth Pharmaceutical vaccine factory in Pennsylvania ; and also acquired US vaccine developer Corixa, which had previously cooperated with adjuvants. During this period, AstraZeneca , Pfizer and other companies also actively acquired the vaccine field, eventually forming a situation of the four giants.
In 2009, GSK developed the AS series of adjuvants, which was very scarce at that time. Before AS adjuvant, the latest adjuvant was the MF59 adjuvant developed by Novartis in 1997, and the others were the most common aluminum adjuvant.
In the next 10 years, GSK has formed a direct competition with Novartis with its AS series of adjuvants. AS series and MF59 have become competitors, among which AS03 and MF59 both contain squalene , which is used to prepare influenza vaccines, HPV vaccines and malaria vaccines. In 2014, GSK acquired Novartis' vaccine division (excluding the flu division). GSK's vaccine business has developed rapidly. In 2017, the revenue of the GSK vaccine sector reached the world's largest.
However, in the development of the new crown vaccine, GSK and Sanofi did not actually go smoothly. At the end of 2020, the two companies announced the postponement of the development of the new crown vaccine because: this vaccine is insufficient in the elderly population. This directly led to the two vaccine giants Sanofi and GSK missing the COVID-19 vaccine market.
I wonder if Sanofi will regret choosing GSK as a partner.
After all, Pfizer chose BioNTech and actually made a gamble, but Sanofi failed, Pfizer did it.
Sanofi admitted it in the competition for the new crown vaccine, but GSK did not give in. In February 2021, GSK stated that it will cooperate with CureVac to develop a new generation of COVID-19 vaccines that can cope with multiple variants. This time we cooperate to develop mRNA vaccines. The sincerity of GSK is very sufficient: 75 million euros were paid in the early stage, and every milestone reached later will be heavily funded.
helpless, GSK really invested money this time, but the partner lost the link. In mid-2021, the clinical data of the new crown vaccine under development of CureVac was disclosed, with an effectiveness of 47%, which was not up to the passing line.
At this point, GSK eventually lost in the COVID-19 vaccine development race.
More people are curious, GSK is so awesome in the vaccine field, why don’t you consider developing the new crown vaccine on your own?
In fact, GSK's signature vaccine business is now facing siege on all sides.
-price HPV was once a signature product of GSK and was approved for sale in the United States in 2009. But in a few years, GSK has not promoted the further development of HPV vaccines. has not been continued until after the Merck 9-valent HPV vaccine was launched in the United States in 2014, GSK's shingles vaccine Shingrix has not been continued.
In 2016, GSK's 2-valent HPV vaccine withdrew from the US market, so he calmly planned to make plans in the Chinese market and chose to reach a cooperation with Alibaba . Merck had arrived at that time and was first launched in Hong Kong. attracted many fashionable women to "fight nine-price".
In the second half of 2017, GSK's shingles vaccine was finally approved for sale in Canada and the United States, and sales began to climb, but it was obviously not as good as Merck in terms of momentum. GSK's original glory in the HPV field was gradually being covered up by Merck.
Moreover, GSK was also facing problems beyond product promotion at that time. Around 2014, for finding that GSK Canadian affiliates violated quality regulations when producing influenza vaccines, FDA required GSK to strictly self-examine global business. Almost at the same time, it was successively charged with corruption in China, Poland, , Iraq, and other countries.
The quality of vaccines and corruption allegations are all events that touch the essence of the soul of pharmaceutical companies. will inevitably bring trouble to its subsequent development and have also evolved into the current dilemma of GSK: cannot deal with emergencies and is difficult to confront other giants in the Nuggets area.
GSK recently announced good news for the shingles vaccine: mid-term research results show that Shingrix can provide at least 10 years of shingles protection effect for adults aged 50 and above, and finally regained some face.
The new crown vaccination cannot last for a long time, but in the face of these public health emergencies and major business opportunities, GSK's vaccine sector appears to be particularly at the top of the two sides.
The former "king of vaccines" came to the altar like this.
committed | nicotinamide
edited | Jiang Yun Jiating
operation | Jia Saixuan
illustration | Visual China
#Vaccine# #Vaccine Enterprise#
