(News Bulletin 247) – The vaccine specialist announced that it had sold this voucher this Monday for an amount of $103 million, thus respecting what it had previously communicated to the market.

Although a little late, Valneva managed to monetize its priority review voucher granted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American health authority.

The Nantes laboratory specializing in vaccines announced Monday that it had sold this priority review voucher for an amount of 103 million dollars or 95 million euros.

The group had previously indicated that it wanted to generate proceeds from the sale of between 90 million and 110 million euros. Initially, Valneva intended to record this sale at the end of 2023 but this sale was postponed by a few months.

The group had consequently lowered its financial forecasts for the financial year ending in 2023, going from a turnover of between 220 million and 260 million euros to a range of 130 million to 150 million euros. Which therefore reflected the exclusion of this sale which will be recorded in the line “other operating income of the group”.

Shorten deadlines

“Priority review vouchers” or “review program vouchers” constitute a system of financial incentives put in place by the FDA. The American agency grants these vouchers to companies which have developed treatments against rare tropical diseases, rare childhood diseases or diseases posing enormous problems to public health and national security, explains the firm Venable LLP.

These vouchers are granted by the FDA to pharmaceutical groups which can then exercise them to benefit from priority examination over another of their treatment, thus shortening the examination period from ten to six months, according to the pharmaceutical-technology site. com.

Once this voucher is received, the beneficiary company can therefore keep it to use it later or simply monetize it by selling it to another pharmaceutical group, which is what Valneva has chosen.

In 2014, the American laboratory Regeneron bought a priority review voucher from the pharmaceutical group Biomarin for $67.5 million in order to have a cholesterol treatment co-developed with Sanofi examined as quickly as possible.

Valneva, for its part, received this voucher after the FDA’s approval of its chikungunya vaccine, “IXCHIQ”, in people over 18 years of age.

The company recalled Monday that it would use the proceeds from this sale to “finance its R&D projects including the co-development of its vaccine against Lyme disease currently in Phase 3 (last step before potential commercialization, Editor’s note), the launch of additional clinical trials for its IXCHIQ vaccine and the expansion of its portfolio of vaccines in clinical development.”

On the Paris Stock Exchange, Valneva shares advanced 2.1% to 3.62 euros, around 11:40 a.m., after opening at more than 5%, in reaction to these announcements.