CureVac: EU Commission offers financing Coronavirus vaccine development

B2Bioworld Comment including Sanofi, Moderna and EU donor conference

Brussels March 2020. The EU Commission offered up to €80m (US$86m) of financial support to CureVac, a highly innovative vaccine developer from Tübingen (DE), to scale up development and production of a vaccine against the Coronavirus in Europe. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel, discussed with the CureVac management via videoconference. The Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Ambroise Fayolle, also participated. 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."

Source: EU Commission

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B2Bioworld Comment

America First: Ignoring other people’s medical needs and shrinking solidarity
Wolf G Kroner

© WHO 2020zoom
A world problem, not just of one country
The Commission’s offer comes at a time when the U.S. President tried to lure the now dismissed American Managers of CureVac to move operations from Germany to the States. The company is planning to translate its research on a corona virus vaccine to a new production facility with a capacity of up to 4bn doses per annum. In order to quickly build up production Curevac has been seeking further investments during the last months. The U.S. dodge was reported by several trustworthy media such as Welt am Sonntag, Reuters and Washington Post, but vehemently denied by the Trump Administration without offering details. However Curevac’s main investor Dietmar Hopp is said having vetoed any unethical deal: “If hopefully we are going to manage the development of an effective vaccine against the corona virus, it should benefit human beings not only regional, but it should be accessible, protect and help people in a solidary manner in the entire world.”

“Wenn es uns hoffentlich bald gelingt, einen wirksamen Impfstoff gegen das Corona-Virus zu entwickeln, soll dieser Menschen nicht nur regional sondern solidarisch auf der ganzen Welt erreichen, schützen und helfen können.“ (Dietmar Hopp quoted by econo 18/03/2020)

Beginning March Daniel Leonard Menichella, who is an American citizen residing in Charlotte, North Carolina (US) and at the time German Curevac’s CEO with sole signing power, was invited to a White House meeting of the Administration’s Corona Task Force with President Trump and other American citizens representing national pharma, biotech and medical device industries. Whatever the ultimate truth, Curevac’s invitation disproves Mr. Trump attacking the WHO to provide “false numbers” while proclaiming his country’s scientists to solve the pandemic on their own. It is telling that no German national belonging to Curevac was also invited to that meeting, for example Ingmar Hörr, the company’s founder and member of the supervisory board. This supports reports by the mentioned media that the Trump government placed indeed its bet on the patriot game when luring the vaccine developer to America instead of actively supporting international collaboration (e.g. with WHO) in the fight against the corona virus. Last not least it is another warning to businesses managed by EU citizens that they should frequently check the loyalty of key employees with American passports even if they have another one. One should keep in mind other instruments which U.S. governments dispose of to access critical business information such as secret scientific results of company R$D. The Patriot Act allows any U.S. government obliging American citizens wherever they are in the world to disclose such information, if only these are justified by “national emergency”.

Meanwhile the United States have been the country most severely hit by the new virus. However other countries around the world are also desperately in need of a cure. “America First” is becoming a dangerous formula for ignoring medical needs of others and shrinking solidarity with other nations. The Curevac case appears to be only the beginnings of what the U.S. is capable of doing to fight the pandemic.

- Beginning of this year Moderna, Inc, a NASDAQ-listed mRNA-vaccine developer, and competitor of Curevac contracted Swiss Lonza to manufacture a potential COVID-19 vaccine (mRNA-1273) at Visp in Switzerland for the next ten years. Moderna is led by French Stéphane Bances (Garde 2016) and Moroccan-American Moncef Mohamed Slaoui (Whitehouse 2020) who recently has been nominated Chief Scientist in the U.S. government’s move to accelerate and secure the provision of Coronavirus vaccine for its population. Moderna's vaccine appears quite promising, but up-scaling had to be outsourced to Lonza's manufacturing site in Switzerland. According to Swiss Sonntagszeitung (2020) Lonza's manufacturing capacities of up to 1 billion doses per annum for Moderna’s vaccine have to be exclusively reserved for Americans.

- In May 40 countries and donors including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation agreed on funding of coronavirus research and developing a vaccine against COVID-19 for all in need (EU 2020). The United States and Russia did not join the global pledge.

- The U.S. administration has been pressuring French Sanofi to give it preference on COVID-19 therapeutics, because the government passed on to the firm some thirty million dollars. However France and the EU clarified that Sanofi had received dozens of millions of tax breaks for R&D as well as direct grants for setting up different manufacturing sites in Europe. Sanofi had to back-pedal to move decisions to backstage (Financial Times 2020).

It is high time to stand up against a government which pretends to only protect its own citizens which is resulting in fostering the spread of the virus worldwide. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations said to the WHO assembly: “There is no choice between addressing the health impact and the economic and social fallout from this pandemic … [the response] will require a massive multilateral effort” adding “It is time for an end to the hubris.” French President Emmanuel Macron framed it less diplomatically in criticising Sanofi: a vaccine against the current pandemic is a “public good for the world, and not subject to the laws of the market”. Clearly, while research and development needs tangible support, one cannot buy trust and solidarity, even if you spend billions of dollars or if you follow a path of “I do not care about others you, America First.   Updated May 2020

References

European Council with European Commission EU (2020): The global response: Working together to help the world get better. May 2.

Financial Times (2020): Macron summons Sanofi chief for claim US has ‘right to’ first Covid-19 jab. May 14.

Garde D (2016): Ego, ambition, and turmoil: Inside one of biotech’s most secretive startups. STAT, September 13.

Khazan O (2020): The Four Key Reasons the US Is So Behind on Coronavirus Testing. The Atlantic, March 13.

Sonntagszeitung (2020): Trump macht Druck auf die Hersteller. Die USA kapern einen Lonza-Impfstoff. Mai 17.

Whitehouse (2020): Remarks by President Trump on Vaccine Development. May 15.

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