While the enormous financial windfalls from COVID-19 vaccines and drugs have led to market speculation of a new wave of mergers and acquisitions in 2022, the huge revenues have also yielded investment in existing pipelines. Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s 5 January announcement they are developing a shingles vaccine is a case in point.
This is the third in a series of vaccine-development partnerships between the companies around BioNTech’s messenger RNA technology, after one to develop an mRNA-based influenza vaccine in 2018 and – most famously – their 2020 agreement to develop a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, which has since won US Food and Drug