Valneva currently markets Ixiaro, a Japanese encephalitis vaccine, and Dukoral, the cholera vaccine it acquired from Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) in 2015. Now, the Lyon, France-based vaccine maker is building on its relationship with the U.S. Department of Defense with a $42 million supply contract for Ixiaro that will significantly boost the small company's revenues.
Under the terms of the agreement, Valneva will supply Ixiaro doses to the Defense Logistics Agency of the DOD over a two-year period, the company said in a statement Wednesday. It expects to make the first deliveries within the coming weeks. The DOD has been using Valneva's jab to protect its personnel in endemic countries since 2010.
Valneva, which will announce full-year results for fiscal 2015 next week, netted about €42 million ($47 million) in revenues in fiscal 2014. Of that, €28.1 million ($31.2 million) was generated by the Japanese encephalitis vaccine.
The Valneva deal draws parallels to Bavarian Nordic, which, in fiscal 2014, finally had its first full-year profit in 5 years, thanks to a U.S. government contract. Most of its revenue for that year came from supplying its smallpox vaccine to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile.
Meanwhile, Valneva's pipeline includes vaccine candidates for hospital-acquired infections and Lyme disease as well as one for C. difficile, on which it is collaborating with GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK). It has also partnered with Glaxo to develop flu vaccines using its EB66 cell line, adding to the 7 deals it struck in 2015 for vaccine makers to use the platform.
- here's the release (PDF)