Shanghai Fosun Pharma (SHA: 600196; HK: 02196) and BioNTech SE (NSDQ: BNTX) of Germany will start China trials of their partnered mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate as soon as China approves the trials. The news came as BioNTech and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) began US and EU trials of the vaccine. Fosun made a $50 million investment in BioNTech and agreed to pay up to $85 million in milestones to form a China development partnership for BNT162. Fosun and BioNTech will share profits from China sales, though Fosun will be in charge of commercialization.

Pfizer and BioNTech are developing BNT162 jointly for global markets with the exception of China, where Fosun shares the rights with BioNTech.

The dose escalation portion of the German/US Phase I/II trials will test the vaccine in doses ranging from 1 µg to 100 µg. Single- and two-dose regimens will be tested. Pfizer has announced agressive plans to manufacture millions to hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine.

BNT162 is the first candidate from BioNTech’s Project Lightspeed, an accelerated development program for COVID-19. The company is developing multiple mRNA vaccine candidates for a range of infectious diseases including cancer and other serious diseases. BioNTech has built computational discovery and therapeutic drug platforms to develop novel biopharmaceuticals. Its oncology candidates includes individualized and off-the-shelf mRNA-based therapies, innovative CAR-T cells, bi-specific checkpoint immuno-modulators, targeted cancer antibodies and small molecules.

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