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Fight against corona: how pharmaceutical giant Bayer should help the Tübingen biotech company Curevac with the vaccine

2021-01-07T11:16:38.215Z


A further vaccine candidate could be available more quickly thanks to a cooperation between the German companies Curevac and Bayer. There may be a new production site in Wuppertal.


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Vaccine research at Curevac: help from big neighbors

Photo: Andreas Gebert / REUTERS

In the race for another corona vaccine, the Tübingen biotech company Curevac is getting help from the pharmaceutical giant Bayer.

On Thursday, both companies announced that they would work together on the further development and provision of a vaccine.

A Bayer spokesman calls the cooperation a “service agreement”.

Vaccines against Covid-19 are still scarce worldwide - and especially in Europe.

The EU has ordered comparatively few cans in good time of the only approved products from Biontech (in cooperation with Pfizer) and Moderna.

All the greater is the pressure to quickly make further vaccines ready for the market - and also to expand production capacities.

On Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) addressed the issue at a so-called vaccination summit - and made it a top priority.

The federal government had high hopes for the vaccine from Curevac, which, like the products from Biontech and Moderna, is based on the new mRNA technology.

In June 2020, the federal government took over almost 23 percent of the company's shares for 300 million euros.

A total of up to 405 million doses of the Curevac product have been ordered across the EU.

How soon the vaccine with the name CVnCoV will be available is open.

Since mid-December it has been in the crucial clinical trial, which will probably continue well into spring.

Approval is expected in early summer - if everything goes well.

"We only help"

Bayer should now help, for example, with the implementation of these complex studies.

For example, all feedback from study centers must be medically assessed.

To this end, Bayer has a large security department that is coordinated from the former Schering site in Berlin.

A registration study also requires a lot of logistics, with which the Leverkusen-based company Curevac wants to help.

In all countries of the European Union as well as in Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, England and Switzerland they want to support, says Bayer.

“We're just helping.

It is and will remain the product of Curevac, ”emphasized a Bayer spokesman.

However, Bayer is given options to become the holder of marketing authorization in other markets outside Europe - the group did not want to comment on which countries that could be. 

Apparently, politicians have at least benevolently accompanied the agreement between the two companies.

A government representative confirmed to SPIEGEL that Chancellor Merkel spoke with Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU), Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Federal Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) about a cooperation between Bayer and Curevac on Wednesday.

"It's about Bayer's support for the extensive third test phase and its logistics," a member of the government told SPIEGEL.

According to SPIEGEL information, the federal government signaled the two companies to provide funds for the approval process if necessary.

Also in the round it was apparently discussed to look again for possible production sites in Germany, similar to what happened at the production site in Marburg, which is to start production for the second German vaccine developer Biontech in the coming weeks. 

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Perhaps Bayer could actually help with the production of a vaccine.

A plant in the USA is an option, but according to SPIEGEL there is also a potential location in Germany: in Wuppertal.

Although this was built by Bayer, it was never put into operation and sold.

The transaction is fresh and was only announced on December 21, 2020.

The buyer is a German subsidiary of the Chinese biotechnology company Wuxi Biologics.

Bayer no longer has any influence over what the new owner does with the 30,000 square meter plant.

But they definitely want to help Wuxi start up the plant.

Wuxi has already announced that it will also use the Wuppertal new acquisition for Covid-19 vaccines.

It is unclear what exactly these are and whether the products from Curevac or Biontech are also included.

Wuxi could not be reached at first.

The plant could bring massive relief and help to ramp up production quickly and deliver vaccines earlier.

The production of mRNA vaccines is anything but trivial.

Simply converting production lines is difficult.

In the case of new products such as the potential vaccine from Tübingen, a technology transfer from the patent holder Curevac to a potential manufacturer is required for production.

At the request of SPIEGEL, many pharmaceutical companies described it as difficult or impossible to quickly provide production capacities for Covid-19 vaccines.

The complicated technology and the long time it took to build such a plant were often given.

Thus, the plant in Wuppertal would be a stroke of luck in the pandemic.

Bayer does not currently manufacture any vaccines itself.

The group is working on a platform for cell and gene therapies and recently bought Asklepios Biopharmaceutical and Bluerock Therapeutics, two companies in the field.

So far, however, the focus has been less on infectious diseases than, for example, therapies for Parkinson's disease or heart disease.

The mRNA technology that companies like Biontech and Curevac are now using is comparatively new.

So far it has only been used in veterinary medicine.

Curevac is considered a pioneer in this technology.

The company was founded in 2000 and the first groundbreaking studies and important groundwork were carried out in Tübingen.

Curevac founder Ingmar Hoerr created the basis.

The biologist published his doctoral thesis in 1999 with the cumbersome title »RNA vaccines for the induction of specific antibodies«.

Ribonucleic acid (RNA), so it was discovered, can be used as a therapeutic agent or vaccine.

For years the company was financed only from the private cash box of billionaire Dietmar Hopp, the founder of SAP.

Bill Gates also invested. 

No matter how much the agreement with Bayer could accelerate the approval and production of CVnCoV, the vaccine is still in the most relevant phase of approval, in which things can still go wrong.

The last phase is considered to be the greatest hurdle and the moment of truth in the pharmaceutical industry.

In the worst case, it can end in failure without approval.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2021-01-07

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