What happened
Over the past few years, popular pharmaceutical company Pfizer (PFE 0.23%) has proven to be a resilient stock during market downturns. That happened on Tuesday when the shares eked out a slight gain as the S&P 500 suffered a nearly 3% decline. Investors were cheered by some good news emanating from the laboratory.
So what
Pfizer and its partner, vaccine-focused biotech Valneva (VALN -2.24%), unveiled data from the phase 2 pediatric clinical trial of VLA15, their Lyme disease vaccine candidate. The data indicates that the recipients, who were ages 5 to 17, experienced a more immunogenic response than adults receiving the jab. The vaccine was safe and well-tolerated by the recipients; no related serious adverse events were observed.
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That's a very positive sign; in a preceding phase 2 study conducted on 246 adults, VLA15 met its primary endpoint of demonstrating that it was immunogenic and produced high antibody responses one month after the administration of the vaccination cycle.
Pfizer and Valneva now plan to include pediatric recipients in the phase 3 trial they are devising for VLA15. The two companies also intend to submit the phase 2 pediatric trial's data for publication and presentation. Pfizer quoted its head of vaccine research and development Kathrin Jansen as saying:
These positive pediatric data mark an important step forward in the ongoing development of VLA15, and we are excited to continue working with Valneva to potentially help protect both adults and children from Lyme disease.
Now what
The continued, solid performance of VLA15 is heartening, particularly considering that Lyme disease, a bacterial illness spread by ticks, is the most common vector-borne affliction in this country. According to recent estimates cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly 476,000 could get Lyme disease annually in the U.S.
