The Commission offered up to €80 million of financial support to CureVac, a higly innovative vaccine developer from Tübingen, Germany, to scale up development and production of a vaccine against the Coronavirus in Europe.
The support would come in form of an EU guarantee of a currently assessed EIB loan of an identical amount, in the framework of the InnovFin Infectious Disease Finance Facility under Horizon 2020.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “In this public health crisis it is of utmost importance that we support our leading researchers and tech companies. We are determined to provide CureVac with the financing it needs to quickly scale up development and production of a vaccine against the Coronavirus. I am proud that we have leading companies like CureVac in the EU. Their home is here. But their vaccines will benefit everyone, in Europe and beyond.”
Founded in 2000, CureVac is a German biopharmaceutical company that has developed a novel technology to overcome one of the biggest barriers to using vaccines: the need to keep them stable without refrigeration. Its vaccine technology is based on messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules that stimulate the immune system. Preliminary studies have shown that technology holds a promise for rapid response to COVID-19. If proven, millions of vaccine doses could potentially be produced at low costs in existing CureVac production facilities. CureVac has already started its COVID-19 vaccine development program and estimates to launch clinical testing by June 2020.
Now the Commission and the EIB are strengthening jointly their efforts to provide the necessary means to CureVac, taking advantage of their long and fruitful cooperation in financial instruments dedicated to support research and innovation such as Horizon 2020 InnovFin and in particular its Infectious Disease Finance Facility.
Original source: European Commission
Published on 16 March 2020
