Making vaccines investable in preclinical vaccine R&D

Recent analyses of vaccine R&D focus on the problem of vaccine access and equity and link them to assetization logics in the pharmaceutical industry. At the same time, empirical analyses of valuation practices in health and biomedicine point to the multiplicity of coexisting valuations. This paper investigates how this multiplicity articulates with the pharmaceutical industry’s imperative to capitalize upon early-stage vaccine research, shaping what counts as a good vaccine. Based on the analysis of interviews and participant observation with a diverse range of actors in the Austrian preclinical vaccine R&D field, we study how actors value vaccine R&D projects at a distinctive moment in time, when no products yet exist that could be assetized. Our analysis identifies five different practices used to arrive at a shared sense of what makes these projects good enough to be pursued. These practices are animated by an overall concern of making vaccines investable. We argue that this concern with investability derives its meaning from a specific capitalization scenario where a good vaccine is one that is worth investing in for the pharmaceutical industry.