‘Like the mRNA’: Pfizer acquires cancer treatment company in $43 billion deal

Pfizer last month announced its $43 billion acquisition of Seagen, a pharmaceutical company that provides cancer treatments.

In a mid-March interview with CNBC, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla compared Seagen’s products to the mRNA technology used in Pfizer’s occasionally lethal COVID-19 serum.

“One in three people in the world are going to have cancer in their lifetime,” Bourla warned, adding that “this is something like the mRNA for vaccines, [but] this is for cancer.”

Seagen markets antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) treatments, which are reportedly designed to target tumor cells while sparing healthy ones. Bourla described Seagen’s ADC treatments as “turbocharged guided missiles that are attacking the cancer cells and can make a huge difference.”

Seagen will add four approved cancer therapies to Pfizer’s existing portfolio of 12 treatments. Seagen’s products raked in $2.2 billion for 2022, which include its top-selling drug Adcetris, a treatment for lymph system cancers that brought in $839 million last year.

“In business & in marketing, if a CEO of a public company announces with such confidence a high demand for a product, he has information we don't have,” commented journalist and activist Efrat Fenigson on Bourla’s announcement. “I wonder what could increase the demand for the treatment?”

Pfizer’s acquisition comes as the pharma giant prepares for losses from fading demand for its COVID products, such as Paxlovid and the mRNA vaccine.

Bourla’s proud comparison of Seagen’s ADC products to Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine may not have the desired effect on the American public.

According to a poll of 1,038 adults commissioned by Children’s Health Defense, 10% of Americans regret taking the injections and 15% report being diagnosed with a new medical condition within weeks or months after taking the COVID-19 injections.

Furthermore, a large-scale survey by Rasmussen published in January found that 73 million Americans — or 28% of the population — “personally” know someone who died from the COVID vaccine, including a majority of Democrats. The number closely matches a peer-reviewed study from MIT last year which found that a 25% increase in cardiac events in young men is directly correlated to the COVID-19 vaccines.