> BioNTech to Receive up to €375M in Funding from German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to Support COVID-19 Vaccine Program BNT162
https://www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/12930907-biontech...
> US government and Pfizer reach $1.95 billion deal to produce millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/22/health/pfizer-covid-19-va...
The Pfizer funding is just a pre-purchase agreement.
Emphasis on support
That doesn't mean the sum is equivalent to the full R&D cost or that the company actually agreed to give the IP developed.
Most likely they could have developed even without public funding but not on the expedited timeline.
> The goal of the initiative is the expansion of vaccine development and manufacturing capabilities in Germany, as well as the expansion of the number of participants in late-stage clinical trials.
The program is funding clinical trials 1 to 3, having bigger cohorts for trials 2 and 3, and scaling up production while trials are still in progress. In short: Everything that makes vaccine development expensive. Finding the actual vaccine candidates is the cheap part.
Do you have any sources on that?
Going from zero to preclinical is about 1/3 of the costs of going from preclinical to phase 2. Phase 3 is not part of this study, neither is parallel production.
BioNTech is a different vaccine type, hence effectiveness and fact that both moderna and pfizer license it.
The fact that Germany subsidised the last stages to speed it up doesnt mean technology should be public access. That's for the government and company to negotiate.