The German laboratory CureVac announced Tuesday the abandonment of the development of its first candidate vaccine against Covid-19, initially hopeful but whose effectiveness has proved disappointing, to focus on a new, more promising serum.
The company specializing in messenger RNA will "
focus on the development of a vaccine against Covid-19 on the second generation
" on which it is working with the British GSK and will therefore "
withdraw
" the current candidate from the procedure continuous review by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Read alsoCovid-19: CureVac's vaccine candidate effective at only 48%
This "
puts an end
" to the pre-order agreement for 405 million doses with the European Union, specifies the laboratory, which however continues discussions with Brussels on the second generation of vaccine.
"
The global fight against Covid-19 continues and we are determined to make a decisive contribution to it with a safe and effective vaccine
" but "
the requirements for an effective fight against the virus and the variants that appear have changed
", explained Franz -Werner Haas, boss of CureVac, in a statement.
48% efficiency
The German laboratory announced in early July the final results of its large-scale clinical study which showed an efficacy of only 48%, a rate much lower than other mRNA vaccines from the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna alliance.
CureVac and GSK want to launch “
in the coming months
” the clinical study on the second-generation vaccine, which takes more into account the variants, for approval “in the
course of 2022
”.
An authorization for the first vaccine would also have been probable "
at the earliest in the second quarter
" of next year, the statement said.
Read alsoCovid-19: the vaccine of the German CureVac facing delays
"
We welcome the fact that CureVac is focusing on the promising second generation vaccine
", called CV2CoV, for which the first studies show "
a clear improvement
" compared to the first candidate, CVnCoV, affirms Rino Rappuoli, scientific director of GSK.
The biotech founded in 2000 by researcher Ingmar Hoerr, a pioneer in messenger RNA research, was among the first to embark on the vaccine race.
