Too late on its competitors Pfizer-Biontech and Moderna, the German biotech preferred to focus on the next generation of messenger RNA vaccine.
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The announcement seemed inevitable. The German curevac laboratory decided on Tuesday, October 12, to stretch to the closet its first Vaccine candidate in RNA messenger against the Cvid-19, on which the company worked on the Rhine for more than a year and a half.
The Biotech of Tübingen (Baden-Württemberg) believes that the latter would arrive too late on the market to still have “an impact on the current pandemic”, explained its general manager, Franz-Werner Haas. A justification that is not without echoing the recent announcement, by the French Pharmaceutical Group Sanofi, the abandonment of its own Vaccine candidate in RNA messenger against CVIV-19.
Contract Signed with the EU now CADUC
The future of CVNCOV, the Curevac vaccine candidate, seemed all the more uncertain as the latest clinical results of Phase 2B / 3, unveiled by the German firm on June 30, had been particularly disappointing. The laboratory then announced that its product was an effectiveness of only 48% against the virus. A rate well below the more than 90% displayed by RNA messenger vaccines of its competitors, Pfizer-Biontech and Moderna.
Pioneer of messenger RNA technology, curevac, founded in 2000 by researcher Ingmar Hoerr, was one of the hopes of the vaccine race. The European Commission has passed in November 2020, a pre-order for biotech for the purchase of 225 million doses, with an option for the acquisition of 180 million additional doses. A contract now obsolete.
The German laboratory does not permanently give up to bring its stone to the building against the Pandemic of Covid-19. The company will focally now “its efforts and resources” on the development of CV2COV, its second-generation RNA messenger vaccine, developed in collaboration with the British Pharmaceutical Society GSK. Currently at the preclinical stage, the latter would have demonstrated, according to Mr. Haas, better efficiency in the triggering of the immune response as his predecessor. Curevac and GSK hope to be able to launch the clinical study “in the coming months”, in order to obtain a “current 2022” homologation.