Vaccitech, the new company that owns the technology behind the AstraZeneca vaccine, has warned that concerns about the rare side effect of blood clotting could affect royalties and the reputation of products in its pipeline.
The University of Oxford on Friday published its prospectus for an initial public offering of at least $ 100 million on Nasdaq, at the end of the week in which the UK and several EU countries recommended not to give the vaccine to younger people.
The submission revealed how much the start of the vaccine sales will receive. If and when AstraZeneca starts selling the shot for profit after the pandemic – which according to their contract could already be in July 2021 – Oxford will give Vaccitech about a quarter of the royalties it receives from the vaccine, about 1.4 percent of total net sales.
The company received a one-time payment of $ 2.5 million when it transferred the technology behind the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine last year.
Vaccitech is developing vaccines for other infectious diseases, including the virus behind shingles and Mers, another coronavirus, as well as the use of the same vector technology in cancer treatments and chronic hepatitis.
The pandemic has helped the company prove that technology works in millions of people, when many biotechnologies are known with little or no data from clinical studies. The rapid development and manufacture of the AstraZeneca vaccine has also helped prove that Vaccitech’s technology can be scaled quickly.
However, the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, known as AZD1222, has been shown to be safe and effective, but the recent concern about a very rare side effect now outweighs the perception of the shot.
“There can be no assurance that the vaccine is not associated with an increase in the overall risk of thromboembolic events,” the company wrote in the submission.
Vaccitech also warned that studies showing that the AstraZeneca vaccine is less effective than the variant first identified in South Africa could affect sales.
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“Any association of AZD1222 with adverse events, or the perception of such association, or any finding that AZD1222 is less effective against certain variants of Covid-19, may reduce the sales of AZD1222 and thus the potential payments we may receive from net sales of the vaccine, and otherwise it could adversely affect the development of and our ability to commercialize any of our product candidates, ”he said.
Vaccitech’s decision to list in New York is a disappointment for the UK, which hopes to attract more investment in life sciences. The British Treasury has a stake in the company, according to people close to the situation.
The largest investor is Oxford Sciences Innovation, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on commercializing the university’s commercial property, with a 29 per cent stake in the offering. Other major shareholders include insurer Prudential, with a 13 percent stake, and entities affiliated with Google Ventures, which own 6 percent.