Europe 1 with AFP 5:02 p.m., April 25, 2022

The pharmaceutical group Valneva fell on the stock market on Monday after its anti-Covid vaccine was rejected by European health authorities.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has sent the laboratory a request for new data to authorize the marketing of the vaccine, the group said in a press release.

The pharmaceutical group Valneva fell on the stock market on Monday after announcing that European health authorities were asking it for new data to decide whether or not to approve its anti-Covid vaccine.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) sent the Franco-Austrian laboratory Valneva a list of questions which "includes requests for the submission of new data and additional justifications for a conditional marketing authorization", declared in a press release the group.

After this announcement, its action fell by some 15% in the first hours of trading on the Paris Stock Exchange.

A vaccine approved in the UK

Valneva has developed an anti-Covid vaccine which has been approved in the United Kingdom for about ten days.

The group then said it hoped that the European Union would do the same quickly, in order to obtain authorization there before the end of June.

The EMA's request, to which Valneva promises to respond in the coming days, therefore marks a setback, although the group says it is still able to meet its schedule if the health authorities deem these new data satisfactory.

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“We are disappointed that the EMA has not considered our submissions sufficient to date,” admitted Valneva CEO Thomas Lingelbach, quoted in the statement, however insisting that his vaccine was still valid. news.

"We continue to receive messages every day from people looking for a more traditional vaccine approach," he said.

Valneva's vaccine is based on an inactivated virus.

Compared to the anti-Covid vaccines authorized in the EU, it is a more traditional technology than the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, with messenger RNA, and, to a lesser extent than those of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, with viral vector, or that of Novavax, with recombinant protein.