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Drug Discovery and Development

GSK and CureVac team up on COVID-19 vaccine to battle viral variants

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CureVac/GSKLate last year, GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) and Sanofi (NYSE:SNY) announced that their joint COVID-19 vaccine was delayed.

Now, GlaxoSmithKline is hooking up with Germany-headquartered CureVac (NSDQ:CVAC) to develop a COVID-19 vaccine that can target multiple variants of the virus simultaneously. GSK plans on spending €150 million on the project, paying the first half to CureVac initially and the latter half as a milestone payment.

For GSK, the project also entails a shift in viral platform. Its previous vaccine candidate was an adjuvanted recombinant protein-based COVID-19 vaccine.

The new project, however, will use the mRNA platform that Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) and Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) have deployed in their vaccines, which were the first to win FDA authorization in the U.S.

The two companies plan to commercially launch an mRNA vaccine in 2022, pending regulatory approval.

GSK will also work with CureVac to produce up to 100 million doses of its first-generation mRNA vaccine. CureVac launched a Phase 2B/3 study to investigate the two-dose vaccine — known as CVnCoV – in late 2020.

The two companies envision that CVnCoV will be available as a general vaccine as well as a booster for recipients of early COVID-19 vaccines.

Filed Under: Drug Discovery and Development, Infectious Disease
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About The Author

Brian Buntz

As the pharma and biotech editor at WTWH Media, Brian has almost two decades of experience in B2B media, with a focus on healthcare and technology. While he has long maintained a keen interest in AI, more recently Brian has made making data analysis a central focus, and is exploring tools ranging from NLP and clustering to predictive analytics.

Throughout his 18-year tenure, Brian has covered an array of life science topics, including clinical trials, medical devices, and drug discovery and development. Prior to WTWH, he held the title of content director at Informa, where he focused on topics such as connected devices, cybersecurity, AI and Industry 4.0. A dedicated decade at UBM saw Brian providing in-depth coverage of the medical device sector. Engage with Brian on LinkedIn or drop him an email at bbuntz@wtwhmedia.com.

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