On November 24th, a netizen on social media platform Xiaohongshu reported that the Pfizer China 13 valent pneumococcal polysaccharide conjugate vaccine (PCV13 vaccine, product name: Pei'er 13, Prevenar 13) team had all been laid off. The screenshot of the notice shared by Pfizer shows that Pfizer has decided to expand its business cooperation with Science Park in China on Peier 13, and Science Park will exclusively import, distribute and promote the product in Chinese Mainland. Pfizer will continue to be responsible for the development and production of this product, and provide necessary professional knowledge.
On the same day, Interface News confirmed the news with Pfizer. Pfizer told Interface News, "We believe that this is a win-win cooperation relationship and an efficient market entry model, which combines the core advantages of the two companies and fully leverages the synergistic effects of both parties, so that our innovative vaccine can benefit a wider population in China." This response is the same as the content in the screenshot of the online video.
However, previously, due to the drag on performance of COVID-19 products, Pfizer announced in October that it had lowered its revenue forecast for the whole year by $9 billion, and announced a multi-year, company wide cost adjustment plan, including layoffs. As of now, Pfizer factories in the United States and other regions have implemented layoffs.
In the context of Pfizer's cost reduction and efficiency improvement, if the news of all vaccine team layoffs mentioned above is true, Pfizer's approach is to end the tradition of building self built teams and entrust more work to Science Park at Pei'er 13. Prior to this, at the 5th China International Import and Export Fair in 2022, Pfizer and Keyuan (also known as Keyuan Trade) had signed a strategic cooperation agreement to carry out comprehensive cooperation on storage, distribution, and supply chain services for Pei'er 13 nationwide.
The pneumococcal polysaccharide conjugate vaccine is a major single product in innovative vaccines. In terms of revenue, Pfizer's Prevnar series closely follows Merck's HPV vaccine Gardasil/Gardasil 9, ranking second in global vaccine product revenue.
In November 2016, Pfizer's Pei'er 13 was approved in China for active immunization of infants and young children aged 6 weeks to 15 months. This is also the only vaccine product approved for sale by Pfizer in China.
In fact, previously, Pfizer was approved in China for the Peyer 7, a 7-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide conjugate vaccine. At that time, Pfizer had already established its own team in China. Until 2015, the import license for Pei'er 7 expired, and Pei'er 13 had not yet been launched. Pfizer disbanded the vaccine team of about 200 people at the time, as there were no products available for sale.
After the launch of Pei'er 13, Pfizer once again formed a vaccine team until all layoffs were announced. During this period, Pfizer also obtained promotion options for domestic vaccine company products.
In July 2020, Kangxinuo granted exclusive promotion rights to Pfizer for its core products A, C, Y, and W135 meningococcal conjugate vaccine (MCV4 vaccine, trade name: Mannheixin). At that time, this was seen as a new model that was different from the "multinational pharmaceutical company MSD supply+local company Zhifei agency". In addition, the joint targeting of PCV13 and MCV4 vaccines towards the young self funded vaccine market is also seen as a favorable factor for cooperation between the two parties. But this cooperation terminated in June 2022, six months after Mannheixin was approved.
More importantly, during this period, the domestic PCV13 vaccine market pattern has also undergone a transformation. In January 2020, Watson Biotech's PCV13 vaccine (trade name: Woanxin) was approved, becoming the first domestically produced and the world's second PCV13 vaccine, breaking Pfizer's three-year monopoly in China. Subsequently, in September 2021, the same product of Kangtai Biotechnology, Weimin Feibao, was also approved for launch and participated in the market division.
According to the Dingxiangyuan Insight database, based on batch issuance data, Pei'er 13 has only 11 batch number data since the beginning of this year. In comparison, Wo'anxin has 56 batch numbers and Weimin Feibao has 15 batch numbers, indicating to some extent the trend of domestic substitution in this field.
The screenshot shared by the aforementioned netizens shows that Pfizer points out that "the uniqueness of its vaccine business lies in its market strategy being completely different from that of its biopharmaceutical business." "Given the complex external environment and competitive landscape we are in, we need to adopt new strategies, which have also been proven effective in the practices of other multinational companies." This is a proven precedent, Undoubtedly, it was Merck, who had already handed over the entire line of vaccine products to Zhifei Biotechnology as an agent.
A domestic vaccine industry practitioner introduced to Interface News that vaccines need to be jointly promoted by multiple parties from approval to vaccination at medical terminals. Firstly, the provincial or municipal CDC will conduct a bidding process for vaccines, confirm their eligibility, and the winning company can participate in the supply. Afterwards, the district and county-level CDC will purchase the vaccines as needed on the platform. Finally, the vaccine will be delivered to various grassroots community hospitals, and the public can make appointments for vaccination. At the same time, vaccine companies also need to conduct academic promotion to medical institutions at all levels of disease control and vaccination services.
Among them, disease control and other departments, as the demand and procurement parties for vaccines, have a considerable voice. This is also the reason why multinational pharmaceutical companies are handing over their products to domestic companies as agents.
In addition to MSD, GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) also handed over the agency rights for its heavyweight product Shingrix (Chinese trade name: Xinan Lishi) to Zhifei Biotechnology in October this year.
Interestingly, Xin'an Lishi was originally represented by pharmaceutical distribution giant Shanghai Pharmaceuticals in China. And the agent chosen by Pfizer this time, Keyuan Trading, is also a pharmaceutical import and distribution enterprise under Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group.
In an interview with the media in August of this year, Keyuan Trade introduced that it provides one-stop services such as import bonded and nationwide distribution, with a distribution network covering 31 provinces across the country, especially disease control departments in over 2000 counties (cities) where imported vaccines are distributed. In May of this year, Keyuan Trading also reached a cooperation with Clover Bio on the commercialization of the tetravalent influenza vaccine AdimFlu-S (QIS).