Pharma's Post-Pandemic Story To Unlock A Cancer-Free Era

Pfizer PFE and Moderna MRNA did not only earn billions of dollars from their COVID-19 leading products but also rose to fame for saving the world from an unforeseen pandemic. But, in a post-pandemic world, Pfizer and Moderna shares lost about 30% of their respective value over the past year. Yet, these struggling pharma companies are promising to turn the tide with their new long-term focus on oncology. Moreover, smaller companies like Mainz Biomed N.V. MYNZ already broke ground when it comes to revolutionizing cancer treatment. 

Pfizer might be down, but it is certainly not out.

Throughout 2023, Pfizer made big moves to turn its growth story around with looming concerns of $17 billion in lost sales due to its blockbusters outside the COVID-19 range set to lose exclusivity this decade. Along with promising acquisitions, Pfizer is completing its biggest ever wave of product launches. By purchasing the oncology specialist Seagen, Pfizer gained four commercialized products with sales on the rise and a valuable opportunity to strengthen its positioning in cancer treatment. By the end of the decade, Pfizer is expecting its new product launches to bring in revenue of $20 billion, along with another $25 billion from its business development deals and $84 billion fromadditional growth from pipeline programs, all of which exclude the COVID-19 portfolio.

Moderna could be headed for a whole new growth era. 

Moderna is a far worse situation considering that the COVID-19 vaccine is its only product. However, Moderna was not standing still. It was focused on developing a solid and diverse pipeline, with many late-stage candidates. Over the next five years, Moderna aims to launch as many as 15 new products. The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine is its closest-to-market candidate and with quite strong trial data, with the decisions from the regulators being due during the first half of the year.  Then there’s the personalized cancer treatment that, along with other products, should bring in as much as $30 billion to the revenue table in a matter of years from the launch. With the first mRNA vaccine for melanoma that Moderna developed with Merck, Moderna could easily unlock an entirely new growth era.

Revolutionizing cancer treatment seems to be one of the themes of 2024.

Moderna’s vaccine is focused on preventing cancer relapse as well as a lethal outcome, while Pfizer aims to develop treatments that improve cancer patients, and then there’s Mainz Biomed is a company that specializes in early cancer diagnostics. ColoAlert® is its flagship product, a non-invasive screening test that promises to save many lives as it is well positioned to meet a significant market need. Besides expanding the cancer identification list, the test’s clinical trial data showed high sensitivity to advanced adenoma, a pre-cancerous state. Therefore, by identifying these polyps, Mainz Biomed is enabling physicals to treat this pre-cancerous state before they progress to colon cancer. This is why Mainz Biomed, although significantly smaller compared to Pfizer and Moderna, made a huge step on the front of cancer prevention. While ColoAlert® is already marketed across Europe, Mainz Biomed is also developing an early-stage pancreatic cancer screening test, PancAlert. As scary as COVID-19 was, cancer is way scarier and has been for quite some time. What's even more concerning is that it has also been on the rise over the last decades with incidence rates soaring even among younger geneartions. Therefore, pharma has an even more difficult battle to win and 2024 will hopefully mark the beginning of a cancer-free era.

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