Global Vaccine R&D pipeline and potential challengers to current market

The current vaccine market is dominated by Big Pharma (see my post). However, the dynamic development in vaccine R&D could change this landscape in the near future. The following table provides an overview of the potential challengers to the current market leaders, in six main categories of vaccines:

Overview of Global R&D pipeline

Pediatric vaccines account for more than 40% of all disclosed vaccine R&D, and for the majority of all vaccine projects conducted by manufacturers in emerging countries. Such attention is caused by both the market size of this category, which according to the projections will reach $100Bln globally by 2025, and by the aggressive vaccination efforts of GAVI alliance, who drives demand and buys more than 50% of pediatric vaccines worldwide. GAVI global vaccination targets gives a guaranteed long-term demand with a preference for developing countries' manufacturers and new vaccines. This leads to a situation in which main developing countries manufacturers are trying to enter the main pediatric disease areas, and existing Big Pharma tries to maintain its market share by proposing improved vaccines in the same disease categories. Competition is even fiercer with the new "technology transfer" initiative from Big Pharma to developing countries. 

Three UN Millennium Goal diseases - HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis - remain scientific challenges with promises of glory and wealth. They attract both Big Pharma, small start-ups and research institutions from all countries. With most of the projects in these areas still in the proof-of-concept stage, we are seeing more and more players progressing to more advanced stages, with even one HIV project at Phase III from Finnish FIT Biotechnologies.

With the growth of purchasing power in Asian and Latin American countries, more companies are turning their heads towards tropical diseases. It is particularly exciting to see progress for diseases with no current vaccines at all. For instance, Sanofi is expecting to launch the first ever Dengue fever vaccine, and Crucell is aiming at the Ebola virus.

The market success of HPV, although mostly driven by cancer concerns, has probably contributed to the explosion of interest in the area of sexually transmitted diseases (STD), with Genoceas aiming to become a pioneer in chlamydia and herpes simplex vaccines. 

Finally, it is interesting to observe the R&D effort coming from emerging countries: Chinese companies (Chengdu Institute, 3SBion, Sinovac) and Indian companies (Serum Institute and Bharat) are focusing on replacing Big Pharma vaccines in their local markets. And Instituto Finlay from Cuba wants to break-through in the most scientifically challenging areas (malaria, tuberculosis, hepatitis), while Brazilian, Indonesian and Mexican players prefer to rely on technology transfer programmes.


ps: the table above does not mention therapeutical cancer and influenza vaccines because there are an important and particular areas which should be treated separately.

Case of MSF: Thoughts on marketing efforts evaluation in humanitarian organisation.

Reaction paper on the article "Meassuring Marketing Productivity: Current Knowledge and Future Directions" by Roland T. Rust, Tim Ambler. Gregory S. Carpenter, V. Kumar. & Rajendra K. Srivastava

The article deals with the question of evaluating marketing efforts and actions. The basic idea is that all marketing "investments" should contribute to a company short-term profit, provide potential growth and sustain profits in the long term. It is required for the successful company to have a business model that assesses both financial and non-financial impacts of its marketing efforts. The financial impact is tracked by the assessment of the financial performance measures, such as sales, profits and shareholders value in both the short and long run. The non-financial impact is the influence on what the customers know, believe, feel and how they behave. The article further deals with the different short and long term aspects of marketing evaluation technique: ROI and market assessment as well as brand equity and customer awareness among others.

Although this model is relatively straight-forward if you see it through the prism of a profit oriented company (though in different industry, methods and tactics of marketing evaluation may differ dramatically), it becomes much less obvious in the case of non-profit oriented organisations.

To illustrate my thought, I will take the case of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the French humanitarian organisation focused on providing medical aid, and well known for their work in war zones and areas affected by natural disasters. MSF's promotional spendings are not significant and constitutes only 2% of the organisation's budget (total 2012 budget $762 million; marketing expenses = promotional expenses + communication + publications = $18 million). This is a small number compared to the marketing budget of most commercial companies. However if one puts it in the perspective of MSF, $18 million is the cost of one medium large MSF country mission, such as Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Central African Republic or Afghanistan. So despite the relatively small part of the entire budget, MSF will probably find itself needing to assess its marketing efforts. However, if one decides to apply a business marketing model to this task, one may face multiple difficulties.

The first difficulty will come as soon as the word "customer" will appear in the marketing model. For, who are the customers of MSF? And who are the beneficiaries? There is no single answer to this question, but many different ones, depending on the context. If one looks at it from the point of view of donations attractions, then the customers are the donators, both institutional, governmental and individual, and the people who receive medical help from MSF on the ground are the beneficiaries. If one looks at it from the perspective of human resources, the picture looks different. MSF considers its biggest asset to be medical personnel who commit for minimum 9 months of field work with an average monthly salary of 800 euros during this time. In this case it is the medical community that becomes the customer of MSF since MSF needs to attract resources from qualified and committed medical personnel, and the people in need become the beneficiaries. If we look at the MSF mission in-country, people who work in the mission see patients as the main customers and if those people working on a project with a local community or the government, see these latter ones as customers.

Example of MSF brand awareness campaign: 

White Flag campaign, Italy, Agency Lowe Pitella Fronzoni, 2010

The second difficulty lies in the identification of short term and long term marketing goals. If we agree that the main marketing goal is to attract donations, than the marketing ROI of MSF will be very low. The main donators of the organisation remain institutional and governmental organisations, and marketing is doubtfully the most effective way of dealing with them (perhaps a combination of PR and lobbing is more appropriate). Individual donations contribute only to around $3 million (out of $684 million in contributions). Targeting these private individuals with a $18 million marketing budget does not look very cost effective to say the least. Perhaps the most appropriate in this situation is to talk about long term non-financial impacts of marketing investments, such as brand awareness and recognition. These are undoubtedly beneficial for both tactical (operations on the ground, negotiations with governments and communities, attracting medical professionals, etc.) as well as strategical (inclusion of MSF in the governmental and intergovernmental plans and policies, etc.) reasons.

Thus when trying to apply business marketing evaluation models to humanitarian organisations, there are difficulties that should be considered. Additional research and innovation is particularly required in this field.