Recently, Sanofi announced that it has reached a definitive agreement with Translate Bio, a clinical-stage mRNA therapeutic drug company. Sanofi will acquire all issued shares of Translate Bio for US$38.00 per share (approximately US$3.2 billion in total). The board of directors of Sanofi and Translate Bio unanimously approved the transaction. Translate Bio is a clinical-stage mRNA therapy company dedicated to the development of new potential transforming drugs to treat diseases caused by abnormal protein or gene function. Translate has an exclusive mRNA therapy platform MRT. Based on this platform, Translate has developed multiple vaccine and therapeutic drug pipelines.
Mechanism of MRT platform (Source: translate.bio)
Translate R&D pipeline (Source: translate.bio)
The mRNA era begins
With the world's many mRNA new crown vaccines making breakthroughs one after another, mRNA technology is being favored by more and more people. The Chinese translation of mRNA is messenger RNA, which acts as a "postman" in the cell-it can transmit the genetic information in the gene to the protein synthesis factory and guide the synthesis of protein. At present, mRNA technology has made great progress in the field of new crown vaccines, and hundreds of millions of people worldwide have been vaccinated with the new crown vaccine developed based on mRNA technology. The working principle of the mRNA vaccine is that this genetic material can make cells in the body produce new coronavirus proteins, so as to stimulate the immune system to produce an immune response against the new coronavirus to prevent possible future infections.
Schematic diagram of mRNA vaccine entering cells and releasing mRNA to guide protein synthesis (Source: Reference 2)
Sanofi's new crown vaccine business encounters Waterloo
In the global COVID-19 vaccine competition, the mRNA vaccine quickly stood out with its wonderful performance, focusing more attention on this track. Nowadays, a number of new crown vaccines have been put on the market one after another around the world, covering different technical routes such as inactivated vaccines, adenovirus vectors, and mRNA vaccines, and huge returns will follow. According to Pfizer’s recently announced results for the second quarter of 2021, the new crown mRNA vaccine BNT162b, which it partnered with BioNTech, achieved operating income of US$7.9 billion in the second quarter. Benefiting from this vaccine, the company’s second-quarter revenue rose by 86%. This vaccine took only 7.5 months from clinical application to emergency use. The performance report released by AstraZeneca shows that in the first half of 2021, its new crown vaccine will achieve revenue of US$1.17 billion. In addition to multinational pharmaceutical companies, with the help of the new crown vaccine, China's local vaccine companies are rapidly emerging. According to CanSino’s recent performance forecast, the company expects to achieve operating income of 2 billion to 2.2 billion yuan in the first half of 2021; net profit attributable to owners of the parent company is 900 million to 1.05 billion yuan, compared with the same period last year , The net profit realized a turnaround from loss to profit. CanSino's performance is mainly contributed by the sales of the new crown vaccine. In addition, China Biopharmaceuticals, which holds shares in the domestic new crown vaccine company Kexing Zhongwei, disclosed in a quarterly report disclosed in May that Kexing Zhongwei's overall profit in the first quarter was nearly 10 billion yuan, which can be said to exceed market expectations. However, Sanofi, one of the world's largest influenza vaccine manufacturers, one of the world's four major vaccine giants, has encountered Waterloo in the development of new crown vaccines. As early as June 2018, Sanofi and Translate Bio reached a cooperation and exclusive license agreement to develop mRNA vaccines. Regrettably, although Sanofi "gets up early" in mRNA technology, it has not been able to catch up with the "market" to get its due gains. Up to now, Sanofi has not been able to use mRNA vaccines to make a difference in the segmentation field. Achievement. Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson (Paul Hudson) previously publicly stated that the company's mRNA new crown vaccine product may not be available this year. Now Sanofi is accelerating its deployment in the mRNA field. In addition to the acquisition of Translate for US$3.2 billion, Sanofi recently announced the establishment of a center of excellence for mRNA vaccines, turning to innovations in mRNA vaccines other than pandemics for routine prevention of diseases with unmet needs. Sanofi will invest 400 million euros (approximately US$476 million) each year to accelerate the "end-to-end" development of next-generation vaccines; and through the reallocation of resources, Sanofi will re-adjust Sanofi's R&D layout in the field of mRNA vaccines.
Industry changes continue
Merck, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Pfizer, and Sanofi, as the "big four" in the international vaccine field, have been relying on blockbuster products to maintain the growth of market segments and maintain the tension and balance of global competition. . However, the delicate balance of the "balance" in the vaccine market is being broken because of this epidemic. Based on the continuous increase in demand for vaccines, the mRNA vaccines jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech continue to increase in volume, becoming Pfizer's highest-selling product. In contrast, Sanofi seemed disadvantaged. At present, the new crown epidemic is still spreading, and the Delta new crown variant is coming violently, and the epidemic situation is urgent all over the world. The transmission rate of Delta virus has nearly doubled, and at the same time the incubation period and passage interval have been shortened. If there is no strong prevention and control measures to intervene, and there is no vaccine immunization to prevent the spread, the speed of the epidemic will be very significant. In the face of mutated viruses, there is still a huge market demand in the new crown vaccine industry. It can be said that the changes in the vaccine industry are still ongoing. In the second half, whether Sanofi can seize the opportunity to achieve corner overtaking, it will take time to give the answer.
refer to:
1.https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/sanofi-translate-mrna-vaccine-investment/602566/.
2. Aldosari et al., (2021). Lipid Nanoparticles as Delivery Systems for RNA-Based Vaccines. Pharmaceutics, https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics13020206.
3.https://www.sanofi.com/en/media-room/press-releases/2021/2021-06-29-10-00-40-2254458.
