Germany puts €300m in CureVac AG for COVID-19 vaccine

The German state will acquire a €300m minority stake (23%) in the Tübingen-based cancer and viral vaccine specialist, CureVac AG. "This is a clear signal for biotech in Germany", said Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier at the occasion of the announcement of the equity financing of the German government through the state bank Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW). Altmaier said that the investment is a first central step in the implementation of the German government’s corona economic development and future technology package. CureVac plans to start clinical trials of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine this summer. Its Mainz-based competitor BioNTech, which announced a €100m debt financing by the European Investment Bank last Friday, is working with the pharmaceutical companies Fosun Pharma and Pfizer to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. It is currently being tested in clinical Phase II trials. In response to the US Operation Warp Speed, which aims, according to US President Donald Trump, to provide the American population with a COVID-19 vaccine as quickly as possible, European countries such as Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands took action to ensure that the vaccine supply in their countries did not fall behind. Thus, they acquired 400 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The international community and CureVac’s main investor Dietmar Hopp had always emphasised that a COVID-19 vaccine had to be available to everyone. According to Hopp, interim CEO Dr Franz-Werner Haas, as well as Minister Altmaier, details of the federal government’s investment are set out in a draft agreement that has already been approved. According to Haas, CureVac intends to use the funds from the capital increase for the further development of the company’s pipeline and mRNA platform technology.

Curevac’s majority shareholder Hopp said: "I am pleased that the importance of biotechnology is also recognized by the government and that this key industry is now being promoted beyond early research. CureVac is just one of the early and outstanding examples of visionary entrepreneurial biotech innovations from Germany.