In view of the disappointing study data, the vaccine would have had no commercial chance anyway, even if it had been approved.
(Photo: imago images / Martin Wagner)
Curevac is withdrawing its Covid vaccine from the approval process and thus giving it up completely. For the Tübingen-based biotech company, this is a bitter, but ultimately strategically correct and basically overdue decision.
In view of the disappointing study data, the Curevac vaccine would not have stood a chance against four already approved competing products with consistently higher effectiveness, even if it had been approved commercially.
The realignment now gives the company the opportunity to use its still comparatively abundant resources more strongly for potential successor products, the improvement of its technology and other projects.
But it also shows indirectly what is wrong with the former bearer of hope. The Tübingen-based company had already revised its mRNA formulation several times in the past, but it still proved to be unable to compete with alternative concepts.
The starting point for the next attempt may be better insofar as you have an experienced partner on board in the pharmaceutical giant Glaxo-Smithkline (GSK), who will now probably take over the direction of further development.
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There is no guarantee of success
But even that offers no guarantee of success – especially since the British company has not exactly shown the happiest hand in drug development in recent years. The risks remain substantial. While the new vaccine candidate has provided solid preclinical data, it has not yet been tested in humans.
With the announcement that they will also test chemically modified RNA constructs in the future, Curevac and GSK also admit that they no longer fully trust the Curevac concept alone. With your new research strategy, you are entering a field in which competitors such as Moderna and Biontech have more than ten years of experience and probably also the better patent position.
The Covid environment with its now very high vaccination rates and the booster strategies of competitors could also prove to be a challenge, for example for the design of meaningful clinical studies.
It seems almost impossible that the European Medicines Agency will continue to approve vaccines at short notice. Even if it were actually possible to develop a new product candidate to market readiness, approval would not be in sight until 2023 at the earliest. In any case, the Curevac shareholders will still need some patience.
More: Curevac gives up Covid vaccine and tries to break free