Curevac

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CureVac

logo
legal form naamloze vennootschap (NV)
ISIN NL0015436031
founding 2000
Seat Tubingen , GermanyGermanyGermany 
management Franz-Werner Haas
Number of employees 470
sales 17.4 million euros (2019)
Branch Biopharmacy , biotechnology
Website curevac.com

CureVac at Paul-Ehrlich-Straße 15 in Tübingen

Curevac NV ( proper spelling CureVac ) is a listed biopharmaceutical company with legal headquarters in the Netherlands and headquarters in Tübingen , which specializes in the research and development of drugs based on the messenger RNA (mRNA).

history

In 2000, Curevac was founded at the University of Tübingen from the working groups of Hans-Georg Rsameee and Günther Jung . In 2003 the company moved to the Biotechnology Center in Tübingen with 18 employees . In the same year, a cancer patient was treated directly with mRNA for the first time in the world in Tübingen. In 2006, Curevac received approval for the first GMP production facility . Since 2013, Curevac has organized the International mRNA Health Conference in Tübingen every year . In 2015, together with the Museum of the University of Tübingen , Curevac opened a permanent exhibition in the Tübingen castle laboratory .

In May 2018, founder and CEO Ingmar Hoerr switched to chairing the supervisory board. Daniel L. Menichella , previously Chief Business Officer and Chief Executive Officer of the US subsidiary Curevac, has been appointed as the new CEO.

In February 2019, the international vaccine alliance CEPI and Curevac announced a US $ 34 million agreement to further develop Curevac's vaccination platform. The platform is intended to enable a rapid supply of RNA vaccines against known diseases such as Lassa fever , yellow fever and rabies .

At the end of January 2020, Curevac received further funding of up to 8.3 million euros from CEPI for accelerated vaccine development and production as well as for clinical studies against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 , which appeared for the first time shortly afterwards and which will soon be distributed worldwide COVID-19 pandemic . Experiments on mice began at the beginning of March 2020. From the initial seven variants, four and then two were pursued. The two variants are in production and should be subjected to clinical tests from early summer in order to find the variant with the best effect (as of March 20, 2020). In mid-June 2020, the Paul Ehrlich Institute approved the clinical trial (phase 1) of a vaccine candidate in a total of 168 healthy adult test subjects, 144 of whom will be vaccinated. There should be a gradual increase in the dose to determine the general safety and tolerability as well as a suitable dose for the generation of an antibody immune response specifically directed against SARS-CoV-2. An approval process is then pending. A widely available vaccine could be available in early 2021 (as of April 2020). The company is working on further developing the production capacity in order to be able to manufacture billions of vaccine doses if necessary.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic , the then CEO Menichella met with US President Donald Trump on March 2, 2020 . Trump tried to secure the rights to the vaccine exclusively for the USA and to poach scientific staff. On March 11, 2020, Hoerr took over the chairmanship again. On March 15, 2020, Curevac announced that a potential SARS-CoV-2 vaccine would not be available to one nation, but to the whole world. Majority shareholder Dietmar Hopp said: “For me it goes without saying, it cannot be that a German company develops the vaccine and that it is used exclusively in the USA. That wasn't an option for me. ”He added that he had not spoken to Trump personally. On March 16, 2020, Curevac denied the press reports, stating that Curevac had not received an offer from the US government or related agencies either before, during or after the White House task force meeting. Also on March 16, the company announced that CEO Hoerr, who had been back in office a few days ago, was absent for an indefinite period due to illness and could therefore not perform his role.

Financing, stock market and shareholders

Until August 2020

Curevac was financed from 2006 to 2014 by Dievini Hopp BioTech Holding, a biotech venture capital company of SAP founder Dietmar Hopp, including 80 million euros in September 2012. Curevac's capital grew to a total of 145 as a result of this investment Million Euro; At the time, Hopp held around 90% of the shares in Curevac. In February 2015 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was won as a new investor and in October 2015 a private placement with five other investors (Baillie Gifford, Chartwave Ltd., Coppel family, Northview and Sigma Group) and a volume of 98.7 million Euro carried out. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested 46 million euros in Curevac. Dievini Hopp BioTech Holding also committed itself to a further payment of EUR 21 million. In 2016, in the course of a further capital increase, two new investors, the Baden-Württemberg investment bank L-Bank and the Baden-Württemberg pension institution for doctors, dentists and veterinarians , were acquired, who invested a total of 26.5 million euros. In 2017 there was another capital increase involving the US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co. in the amount of 45.0 million euros. Since it was founded, Curevac had raised over 360 million euros by issuing shares until the end of 2018.

In June 2020, the federal government took a 23% stake in Curevac through the state-owned development bank KfW for 300 million euros. At the time, the company was valued at around EUR 1.3 billion. In July 2020, the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) invested almost 10% in Curevac with 150 million euros as part of a cooperation to research, develop, produce and market up to five mRNA-based vaccines and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs); GSK also makes a one-off payment of € 120 million and a refundable payment of € 30 million. The latter is due as soon as the CureVac industrial production plant currently under construction in Germany has received its GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) certification from the responsible authorities. CureVac is also entitled to payments for development and approval milestones of up to 320 million euros and for commercial milestones of up to 380 million euros. In addition, CureVac receives tiered royalties on product sales.

IPO in August 2020

On August 14, 2020, the company went public on the American technology exchange NASDAQ . With an issue price of $ 16 and gross issue proceeds of $ 245.3 million, the company was valued at approximately $ 2.3 billion. The registration of 15,333,332 million shares for trading on the stock exchange was declared effective by the American registration authority SEC on August 13, 2020 under the ticker CVAC. The company's share capital is divided into 177,968,203 ordinary shares. The stock rose 250% to $ 55.9 on the first day of trading.

As part of the IPO, CureVac AG becomes a 100% subsidiary of the Dutch holding company, while the current shareholders of the AG also became shareholders of the newly founded private Dutch company CureVac BV with an exchange ratio of 1: 133.0778. This private company was transformed into a Dutch public limited company, CureVac NV. At the same time as the IPO, Dievini Hopp BioTech Holding signed a capital increase of 100 million euros. After the IPO and the additional financing by Dietmar Hopp, the following shareholders participated in the share capital: Dievini Hopp BioTech Holding GmbH & Co. KG (49.5%), Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (17.0%), Glaxo Group Ltd. (8.5%), board members and supervisory boards together (1.1%).

Locations

In addition to the headquarters in Tübingen, Curevac has a location in Frankfurt am Main, where clinical development is being carried out. A US subsidiary has been active in Boston since 2015 .

Research areas

Curevac is active in three research areas.

In oncology , Curevac is concentrating on new therapeutic approaches for the treatment of solid tumors through the use of sequence-optimized mRNA (“RNActive”). For the first time worldwide, phase I / IIa studies in several countries (Italy, Switzerland, Germany and the USA) treated patients with mRNA in the indications of prostate cancer and lung cancer . For patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer, a randomized clinical phase IIb study was started in March 2013 with up to 200 patients in several European countries. However, the study showed that the prostate cancer vaccine did not have a better patient survival rate than the placebo group . In September 2014, Boehringer Ingelheim and Curevac agreed on a collaboration to further develop the active ingredient CV9202 (BI 1361849), a therapeutic vaccine from Curevac for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Curevac develops prophylactic vaccines against infections based on mRNA . Here they cooperate with Sanofi-Pasteur ( Sanofi-Aventis Group), one of the world market leaders for vaccines. In addition, Curevac is developing an immunostimulant ( adjuvant ) based on RNA to enhance the effectiveness of prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines. In November 2012, Curevac and the Friedrich Loeffler Institute published data on an mRNA-based flu vaccine in the journal Nature Biotechnology . This vaccine could provide lifelong protection; it has yet to be tested in extensive clinical studies. In October 2013, Curevac and the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson entered into a cooperation to develop a flu vaccine.

In the area of molecular therapies, Curevac works with Arcturus Therapeutics , among others , to develop active ingredients against rare diseases such as OTC deficiency (deficit in ornithine transcarbamylase ).

Awards

In 2007, Curevac received the innovation award of the state of Baden-Württemberg and was also the winner of the nationwide Weconomy competition, which is awarded jointly by the Handelsblatt and the Wissensfabrik . Curevac, together with its research partner NMI, also received the nationwide cooperation award from VBU DECHEMA for innovative approaches to immunotherapy .

On March 10, 2014, Curevac received the European Commission's innovation prize, which was awarded for the first time and worth 2 million euros, for a new vaccination technology based on mRNA.

Web links

Commons : Curevac  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

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  40. ↑ CureVac begins clinical phase 2b study of its mRNA-based cancer vaccine in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer (PDF file; 89 kB) In: curevac.com of March 27, 2013.
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  52. ↑ European Commission: German company receives the EUR 2 million EU prize for innovative vaccination technology , press release of March 10, 2014.