Pfizer takes its shot at a vaccine for evasive superbug

Jansen, senior vice president of Vaccine Research and Early Development at Pfizer Inc, poses in her lab at Pfizer headquarters in Pearl RiverBy Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – Kathrin Jansen is a microbiologist with at least two breakthrough vaccines to her name: she brought the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil to market for Merck and helped develop the $4 billion a year pneumonia and meningitis vaccine Prevnar 13 for Pfizer. Jansen's next vaccine success could come by taming the superbug MRSA, a drug-resistant bacterium that she has seen ravage a healthy man up close and personally. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infects an estimated 53 million people globally and costs more than $20 billion a year to treat. …