CureVac (CVAC) is a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Tübingen, Germany, that develops therapies based on messenger RNA (mRNA). The company’s focus is on developing vaccines for infectious diseases and drugs to treat for cancer and rare diseases. The company is backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
CureVac joins a growing roster of public companies around the world that are fervently focused on developing a viable Covid-19 vaccine candidate. Novavax and Johnson & Johnson on Friday said they had each signed deals with the U.K. government to deliver millions of doses of their own experimental Covid-19 vaccines.
CureVac’s efforts focus on so-called messenger RNA, in which the vaccine “teaches” the body’s cells to identify and attack the coronavirus. The company in June said it received regulatory approval to begin Phase 1 clinical trials, with results expected before the end of the year.
On the heels of a $640 million private round, Germany’s CureVac has netted $213 million in its Nasdaq debut. The bulk of the proceeds will bankroll its mRNA vaccine for COVID-19, with the rest going to manufacturing, platform development and other programs.
The company also picked up another $118 million through a private placement to longtime investor, Dietmar Hopp, according to Renaissance Capital. All of this cash comes in even before CureVac’s COVID-19 candidate has put up any human data.
Like its peers, Moderna and tandem BioNTech/Pfizer, CureVac is developing an mRNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. But it is trailing its peers, whose candidates are already in late-stage trials. CureVac secured approvals from Belgian and German authorities in June to conduct a phase 1 trial. That’s not to say CureVac should be counted out—in pandemic that will likely need as many vaccines as possible, it will still have a potentially big role in the R&D effort.
The company will spend about $150 million of its IPO proceeds push its COVID-19 vaccine program through a phase 3 study and about $50 million to expand its short-term manufacturing capabilities, it said in a securities filing.
It earmarked another $25 million for its lead cancer program, CV8102, which is in phase 1 for various cancers, including melanoma and head and neck cancers, and about $10 million for its rabies vaccine, CV7202, also in phase 1. The capital should push them both through phase 2 studies, according to the filing. Finally, about $65 million will go toward developing its mRNA technology platform and advancing its other preclinical and clinical programs.
The IPO comes a week after CureVac signed a new chief scientific officer, Novartis alum Igor Splawski, Ph.D., and settled on a full-time CEO after months of executive musical chairs. Daniel Menichella, the company’s CEO since 2018, mysteriously exited in March and was replaced by the man he, in fact, replaced two years earlier: Ingmar Hoerr, CureVac’s founding CEO.
A week later, CureVac announced Hoerr would take a temporary leave of absence for medical (but not COVID-19-related) reasons and installed deputy CEO Franz-Werner Haas in Hoerr’s role “until his return.” But return he did not and earlier this month, Haas took “interim” off his job title.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Backs CureVac (CVAC)
Bill Gates, whose charitable foundation partnered with CureVac as early as 2013 to develop vaccines against malaria and universal influenza, is convinced of their approach. “The implications of mRNA vaccines are enormous,” Gates said in a speech at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Berlin in 2018. “They could be produced cheaply and quickly – maybe even quickly enough to respond to a new global pandemic.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded CureVac with $44.2 million, including grants to work on the malaria and influenza vaccines. CureVac confirmed that the Gates Foundation is the second biggest shareholder in the company.
