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Curevac headquarters in Tübingen: first failed, now new hope
Photo: Thomas Kienzle / AFP
The previous head of technology at Curevac is leaving the Tübingen company.
After 16 years, Mariola Fotin-Mleczek, who is also a board member, will leave the company at the end of January, Curevac announced.
Igor Splawski, who was previously head of research, is to take her place.
After 33 years in Germany, Fotin-Mleczek wants to return to her home country of Poland and set up a family business outside of the biotech industry, Curevac said.
It is not the first change in the management of the company.
Last June, for example, the former Sanofi manager Malte Greunde replaced the co-founder and production director Florian von der Mülbe.
Only shortly before that, the co-founder Ingmar Hoerr announced that he no longer wanted to run for the supervisory board.
The first vaccine was a failure
The Tübingen-based company, whose major investors include Dietmar Hopp, is not only struggling in terms of personnel, but also financially: in the third quarter of 2021 alone, the Tübingen-based company made a loss of more than 143 million euros.
The main reason for this was the high research and development costs for the vaccine "CVnCoV", the company's first vaccine candidate.
After disappointing study results, Curevac stopped developing the vaccine last October.
The company is now working with the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline on a second-generation vaccine.
In a preclinical study in monkeys, the vaccine showed improved efficacy.
Spokespersons from Curevac recently assumed that approval should come this year.
jlk/dpa
