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It won’t even make Pfizer a tiny fraction of what its other new vaccines have and will earn, but the New York-based drugmaker has secured another FDA-approved inoculation.
Pfizer announced Monday that U.S. regulators have OK’d Ticovac, the company’s vaccine against tick-borne encephalitis, a virus that infects the brain and nervous system and can sometimes cause long-term cognitive, skeletal or muscle effects. .
If you’ve never heard of tick-borne encephalitis, it’s probably because it hardly exists in the United States. From 2000 to 2017, the CDC recorded eight cases in the United States, all from travelers who have stayed in China or Europe, where Ticovac has been approved since the 1970s. (China has its own local vaccine, called SenTaiBao, all like Russia).
The U.S. approval comes after a multi-year collaboration between Pfizer, which took over by buying Baxter’s vaccine unit for $ 635 million in 2014, and the U.S. military. Servicemen posted overseas make up the vast majority of U.S. residents who receive Ticovac, but it can be tedious: it requires three different shots, and the member often has to get clearance to leave the base and travel to a country. different for each of them.
The US approval will hopefully mean that the military can receive doses while still in the United States.
Unlike its Covid-19 shot or the recently approved Prevnar 20 shot, the TicoVac OK won’t mean much to Pfizer’s bottom line: last year the company only raised $ 27 million from TicoVac sales .
But it will help provide strong protection against the tick-borne virus: TicoVac’s efficacy estimates vary but tend to hover between 96% and 99%, roughly the best researchers can hope for in a vaccine. In the age of mRNA, it’s a reminder of the effectiveness of old-fashioned technology. TicoVac is made from an inactivated virus, the same platform Jonas Salk used for polio.
The approval also comes as tick-borne encephalitis becomes a larger problem. The CDC estimates that the virus has expanded its range over the past three years, likely due to a complex combination of causes, including climate change and changes in how researchers diagnose and conduct surveillance.
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