Vaxcyte is set to raise $500 million via a stock sale to fund its work on a pneumococcal vaccine it hopes can supplant Pfizer’s Prevnar 20.

The San Carlos, CA biotech plans to use the money to fund the Phase III program in older adults for VAX-24, its 24-valent pneumococcal vaccine that has each of the the 20 serotypes in Prevnar 20, plus four more. It also plans to build up its manufacturing process and capacity for an initial launch of the vaccine, according to an SEC Prospectus.

Read more.