CureVac investors to accelerate vaccine development

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will invest $52 million in biopharma company CureVac, as well as supply separate funding for several projects to develop prophylactic vaccines based on the company’s messenger RNA (mRNA) platform. In addition, longstanding CureVac investor dievini Hopp BioTech will commit $24 million of additional equity.

CureVac is pioneering the use of natural and chemically unmodified mRNA as a data carrier to instruct the human body to produce its own proteins capable of fighting a wide range of diseases. The therapeutic platform allows for rapid, low-cost production of multiple drugs and vaccines, whose thermostability eliminates the demand for cold-chain storage and infrastructure.

Dietmar Hopp, from dievini Hopp Biotech, explained that mRNA is “like software that is able to teach the body to reprogram itself in order to fight cancer and infectious disease”. Gates Foundation Co-Chair Bill Gates added that he is “pleased to partner with CureVac” in the development of the technology, stating, “If we can teach the body to create its own natural defences, we can revolutionise the way we treat and prevent diseases.”

The foundation’s investment will support continued development of CureVac’s platform technology and the construction of an industrial-scale good manufacturing practice (GMP) production facility, which will have dedicated capacity to focus on products resulting from Gates Foundation-related projects. Together, the two organisations will collaborate on the development and production of vaccines against infectious diseases that affect people in the world’s poorest countries.

The Gates Foundation will provide additional funding for multiple projects developing vaccines for viral, bacterial and parasitic infectious diseases and has already started work with CureVac on initial projects for diseases such as rotavirus and HIV. Any Gates Foundation-funded products will be made available by CureVac at an affordable price in poor countries.

CureVac CEO Ingmar Hoerr said the Gates Foundation investment will “support us in expanding our mRNA platform at an accelerated pace” and “allow CureVac to contribute its versatile technology to combat many serious infectious diseases, while also benefiting from the foundation’s significant network and expertise in the vaccine market”.

“We feel very well positioned to scale up our GMP manufacturing capabilities in order to supply the world markets with our products,” he said.

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