Pharma BD Deal Intelligence
Pfizer and Valneva updated their Lyme disease vaccine collaboration on June 22, 2022: Pfizer made a EUR90.5M (~$95M) equity investment for an 8.1% stake in Valneva, with up to $168M in remaining development/early-commercialization milestones, up to $100M in cumulative sales milestones, and tiered 14%-22% royalties, alongside initiation of the Phase 3 VALOR study (VLA15) in Q3 2022. The program then weathered a major setback: on February 17, 2023 Pfizer discontinued roughly half of the U.S. participants after Good Clinical Practice violations were found at a third-party clinical-trial site operator (not a vaccine safety or adverse-event issue). VALOR continued, and on March 22-23, 2026 Pfizer and Valneva reported strong Phase 3 efficacy for the six-valent OspA-based candidate (now PF-07307405 / LB6V, formerly VLA15): 73.2% efficacy from 28 days post-dose 4 (season 2) and 74.8% from 1 day post-dose 4, with the vaccine well tolerated and no safety concerns identified. Pfizer stated it is planning submissions to regulatory authorities (FDA/EMA). A positive readout materially de-risks what would be the first Lyme disease vaccine since LYMErix was withdrawn in 2002.