Is the pneumococcal vaccine Advance Market Commitment motivating innovation and increasing manufacturing capacity? Some preliminary answers.

This paper seeks to give some preliminary evidence on the potential outcome of the pneumococcal vaccine Advance Market Commitment (AMC), with a focus on its impact on innovation in 'emerging' vaccine manufacturers in developing countries. The evidence is derived from a series of interviews with executives at industrial vaccine developing organizations with pneumococcal vaccines in their R&D portfolio, including both multinational pharmaceutical companies and 'emerging' manufacturers. The main findings are that so far there is no evidence to support any claim that the AMC is speeding innovation of pneumococcal vaccines, or that it is contributing to productive capacity expansion. Representatives of emerging manufacturers consistently state that the AMC is either irrelevant or inappropriate for supporting their innovative activities on pneumococcal vaccines.