Pharmaceutical companies are working to step into the pneumonia vaccine market, which Pfizer currently dominates and is forecasted to generate $10 billion by 2028, The Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 31.
The global market for pneumococcal vaccines sits at $7 billion, and rival drugmakers such as Merck, GSK and Vaxcyte are looking to enter it, according to the Journal.
Pfizer's pneumonia vaccine, Prevnar, was a main source of income for the New York City-based drugmaker before the COVID-19 pandemic sprung up across the world. In 2021, Prevnar made Pfizer $5.27 billion in sales as its COVID-19 vaccine made $36.7 billion.
With government contracts for COVID-19 vaccines expected to end sometime soon, though, pharmaceutical companies are shifting toward developing pneumonia vaccine candidates.
The FDA initially approved Merck's pneumonia vaccine, Vaxneuvance, in 2021 and then expanded the approval in late June to include children between 6 months and 17 years old. The global company did not list Vaxneuvance as one of its top-selling medications in its fourth-quarter results, which could be because Prevnar is a single dose and the CDC recommends adults get a booster dose a year after receiving Merck's option.
"In the adult market, it's clear that Prevnar-20 and Pfizer are eating Merck's lunch," Daina Graybosch, PhD, an analyst at SVB Securities, told the Journal.
Prevnar-20 is an FDA-approved version of the adult vaccine that covers 20 strains. Both drugmakers' pediatric pneumococcal vaccines are four-dose series.
GSK and Vaxcyte are both working on late-stage trials to test their respective vaccine candidates, according to the Journal.