Take­da’s dengue vac­cine Qden­ga is now ap­proved in the Eu­ro­pean Union, fol­low­ing its first ap­proval this sum­mer in In­done­sia. The big­ger ques­tion though, es­pe­cial­ly for Eu­rope, may be: is the vac­cine need­ed?

Take­da says yes. While dengue is not en­dem­ic to main­land Eu­rope, glob­al trav­el, in­creas­es in glob­al­iza­tion and cli­mate change lead­ing to a jump in out­breaks in non-en­dem­ic ar­eas mark a need for Qden­ga. It is the first dengue vac­cine that can be used with­out test­ing for pre­vi­ous in­fec­tion. Sanofi’s al­ready-ap­proved Deng­vax­ia does re­quire a pre-vac­ci­na­tion blood test.

Take­da is plan­ning a coun­try-by-coun­try roll­out in Eu­rope for trav­el­ers, and a more typ­i­cal vac­cine roll­out in over­seas EU coun­tries where dengue is en­dem­ic. Take­da will work with those coun­tries and na­tion­al im­mu­niza­tion pro­grams, Take­da said in a re­sponse to email ques­tions from End­points News, adding that the launch­es are ex­pect­ed to be­gin next year.

The world­wide in­ci­dence of dengue has jumped eight-fold, Take­da said in its press an­nounce­ment. Ac­cord­ing to a Eu­ro Sur­veill re­port, France, for ex­am­ple, record­ed 65 au­tochtho­nous, or not im­port­ed, cas­es of dengue, well above the coun­try’s typ­i­cal hand­ful. Ger­many, Italy and Spain have al­so record­ed cas­es since 2018.

Dengue is en­dem­ic in more than 100 trop­i­cal and sub-trop­i­cal coun­tries, ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tions, led by Brazil, Viet­nam, Philip­pines, In­dia and In­done­sia this year by num­ber of cas­es to date.

Along with the EU roll­out, Take­da is work­ing to raise dengue aware­ness with health­care pro­fes­sion­als and the gen­er­al pub­lic with the launch of web­sites for each au­di­ence. Once the vac­cine launch­es in Eu­rope, Take­da will work with the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty “to help dri­ve aware­ness and adop­tion of Qden­ga, and ease bar­ri­ers to vac­ci­na­tions,” Take­da said in the email.

In Oc­to­ber dur­ing its fis­cal first-half earn­ings call, Take­da ex­ec­u­tives tout­ed Qden­ga and not­ed that half of the world’s pop­u­la­tion is at risk, with 390 mil­lion dengue in­fec­tions and four mil­lion hos­pi­tal­iza­tions.

CEO Christophe We­ber said more de­tails about the Qden­ga com­mer­cial strat­e­gy will be pro­vid­ed in an in­vestor event on March 15. Take­da’s vac­cine chief Gary Du­bin told Reuters ear­li­er this year that it ex­pects Qden­ga to gen­er­ate $700 mil­lion to $1.6 bil­lion in sales over the next sev­er­al years.

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