Valneva, VBI Vaccines ink pact for Hepatitis B vaccine PreHevbri

Under the terms of the agreement, specialty vaccine company Valneva will promote and distribute PreHevbri throughout select European countries, which initially include the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Valneva and VBI expect PreHevbri to be available in these countries in early 2023.

Thomas Lingelbach, President and CEO of Valneva, commented: "We welcome this partnership with VBI which underlines Valneva's expertise in vaccine commercialization. Among the past years, we have continued to develop our third-party vaccine marketing and distribution activities further, notably with the signing of a distribution agreement with Bavarian Nordic in 2020, and we are extremely pleased to add VBI's Hepatitis B vaccine to this portfolio today. Our objective is to continue leveraging our commercial infrastructure to combat as many infectious diseases as we can."

Jeff Baxter, President and CEO of VBI, commented: "This partnership is a significant milestone for PreHevbri, enabling us to hit the ground running in Europe. Valneva has substantial local knowledge, experience, and relationships in each of these European countries where we expect to launch, which will be of critical value as we work, collectively, to provide broad access to this differentiated 3-antigen HBV vaccine in Europe. Strategically, VBI and Valneva are two companies aligned by a shared mission to reduce the burden of infectious disease, and this new collaboration will build upon that meaningful synergy."

PreHevbri was approved by the European Commission (EC) and the United Kingdom Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the second quarter of 2022 for active immunization against infection caused by all known subtypes of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) in adults.