Analysis of the Global Vaccine Market: With Vaccines Customized, Can We Afford Them?

The personalized cancer vaccines have been very popular in recent days, and the blockbuster results of two early studies of personalized vaccine have attracted much attention, bringing innovative treatment means and control concepts to tumors. Certainly, patients look forward to safe and effective tumor vaccines. For tumors, most vaccines belong to therapeutic tumor vaccine, and can activate the immune system to some extent and somewhat control the growth and spread of tumor cells. In this article, the results of the above two personalized early clinical studies of tumor vaccine are first introduced, and the trends of the vaccine market in the next 5 years are appropriately interpreted and forecast with reference to the latest industry research report of EvaluatePharma.

I. How would the cost be if vaccines were "customized"?

The clinical control of tumors has been an issue of much concern, and the application of therapeutic tumor vaccine in clinical treatment has been highly anticipated. According to a study of Nature, the proteins with abnormal expression in tumors could not effectively increase the immune response of mouse model as therapeutic vaccine, and scientists speculated that the reason for failure of the proteins with abnormal expression on tumor surfaces to cause effective immune response was because the expression quantity of those abnormal proteins did not reach the ideal level.

Scientists have ingeniously designed personalized tumor vaccines, i.e., the "customized" version of vaccines, with the wide application of genome sequencing and the in-depth understanding of the concept of tumor immunotherapy. The steps to design the "customized" tumor vaccine mainly include: 1. Sequencing: identify the tumor-specific mutation and its encoding protein of certain individual; 2. Screen the most suitable protein with abnormal expression in tumor through certain algorithm; 3. Design and manufacture the tumor vaccine.

The two research teams of the U.S. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and German University of Mainz have this time announced the early clinical trial results of a tumor vaccine specific to melanoma patients. The two teams found through research that the surprising results of complete disappearance of tumor in 4/6 patients and 8/13 patients were separately achieved after vaccination of the tumor vaccine, and the remaining patients also achieved the complete disappearance of tumor after receiving the tumor vaccine and PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor.

II. Forecast of the vaccine market in the next 5 years: Sanofi, GSK, Pfizer and MSD to maintain the steady dominancy

According to the market data statistics, the sales data of Pfizer’s Prevnar13, MSD’s Gardasil, Sanofi’s Pentacel and GSK’s Bexero are quite outstanding, and it’s worth mentioning that those companies almost occupy the entire vaccine market, accounting for 80% market shares in total. In addition, Emergent Biosciences is expected to have strong growth of the ultrahigh compound annual growth rate of 26% upon Anthrax vaccine.

The vaccine market will still maintain solid growth in 2017-2022, wherein, companies including GSK, MSD and Pfizer, etc. will occupy most market shares in the field, with quite stable market advantages, as shown in the following figure:

Market Share

Also, the innovative therapies of vaccine will gradually become reality. From the following table, we can see the market performance of the several vaccine products in the next years, most of which are the traditional viral vaccine.

The future approval and R&D directions of vaccines are also our focus. The traditional viral antibodies still occupy a large proportion among the potential vaccine pipelines in recent 5 years listed in the report. The first part of the article therein involves the "personalized vaccine" of tumors, from which, we can see the long cycle and long way for industrialization of the "customized" vaccines.

The vaccine market is expected to reach USD 33.7 billion in 2022, there will be 4 giants in the field, the vaccines will mostly be the traditional viral vaccine, and the "customized" tumor vaccines will have bright development prospects in the context of precision medicine, however, undeniably, the time is still not ripe for the personalized vaccines.