Curevac is making progress in developing a second-generation vaccine

Biotech company Curevac is making progress in developing a second-generation vaccine after disappointing study results of its first Covid-19 vaccine. This vaccine - which, unlike the first, CureVac did not develop on its own, but in partnership with the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline - had shown an improved immune response and protective effect in a preclinical study, the two companies said. In the study in which the vaccine was tested on monkeys, the vaccine also achieved a stronger antibody neutralization of all selected virus variants, including the highly contagious Delta variant as well as the beta and lambda mutations. CureVac and GlaxoSmithKline are expected to bring the vaccine to clinical trials in humans in the fourth quarter. The CureVac share rose by up to eight percent. In spite of everything, the company is still striving to obtain approval for its first vaccine from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and is currently submitting further comprehensive data packages there. In the crucial clinical study, the vaccine was only 48 percent effective. Together with the results of the study, the Tübingen-based company also opened its books - and presented numbers in the red. The operating result in the spring was accordingly minus 147.8 million euros, after only a minus of 3.2 million euros had fallen in the same period of the previous year. Curevac, in which Germany has a stake, referred, among other things, to higher research and development costs for a corona vaccine. The pre-tax result was minus 152.2 million euros, after minus 12 million a year earlier. Curevac closed the first half of the year with a cash position of 1.36 billion euros.