Dive Brief:
- After striking partnership deals with Johnson & Johnson and Bristol-Myers Squibb to co-develop Ebola and cancer treatments, Bavarian Nordic is planning to stay independent. Company CEO Paul Chaplin told Reuters that he's not interested in having the firm get in on biopharma's M&A craze.
- Bavarian Nordic is best known for selling vaccines to governments as part of governmental biodefense efforts.
- The company recently changed its management team, which is signaling greater openness to the broader biotech community.
Dive Insight:
Bavarian Nordic has partnered with BMS in a $1 billion deal to work on its prostate cancer vaccine, Prostvac, which is in late-stage clinical trials with the goal of receiving FDA approval. In addition, Bavarian is working with Johnson & Johnson on an Ebola vaccine.
The excitment around Bavarian Nordic's platform is the idea that vaccines can be used to prevent and/or treat various cancers. It all comes down to stimulating the immune system to behave in a certain way—something that has already been proven now that checkpoint inhibitors, such as Yervoy and Keytruda, are approved and in clinical use.
Yet despite its successes, Bavarian Nordic is determined to avoid becoming part of the M&A frenzy—at least for now.