Bavarian boosts its travel vaccine offering

Bavarian Nordic investors must hope the group’s latest move, buying a trio of travel shots from Emergent Biosolutions, does not indicate a lack of confidence in its existing pipeline. The group has two pivotal readouts approaching on its adult RSV and Covid vaccine candidates, and today paid $270m up front to get two marketed vaccines, Vivotif and Vaxchora, and a late-stage Chikungunya candidate. The price tag seems steep: the two commercial products brought in just $38m between them in 2019, before Covid hit the travel jab sector. During a conference call Bavarian’s chief executive, Paul Chaplin, said the company had experience of turning around neglected products, for example its rabies shot Rabipur, bought from GSK in 2019. Still, Chikungunya could be the main prize, with an estimated annual market of over $500m up for grabs. There are no vaccines or therapies for the virus, but Valneva is ahead, having completed US filing of VLA1553 in December. VLA1553 is a live attenuated vaccine, while Bavarian’s new project uses virus-like particles; the Danish group says this could give it advantages including a faster onset of action and a better safety profile. The latter still needs to be proven, however.