Curevac vaccine met with great interest

The biotech company Curevac sees increasing interest in its as yet unapproved vaccine in view of the problems with rare thromboses in other corona vaccines. "Much more vaccine is needed than is available," said CEO Franz-Werner Haas in an analyst conference. The talks ran under high pressure. Curevac speaks mainly with governments, but also with the Covax vaccination initiative of the World Health Organization, which strives for a fair distribution of vaccines worldwide. Curevac is on schedule for the project: data on the effectiveness of the vaccine are still expected this quarter. The application for a conditional marketing authorization with the European Union is also aimed for in the second quarter of the year. Curevac expects the end of May or the beginning of June, as a spokesman confirmed. The EU has secured up to 405 million doses of the vaccine. Like that from Biontech / Pfizer and Moderna, the agent is based on so-called messenger RNA (mRNA), which is supposed to convey information to human cells to fight pathogens. The vaccines from Astrazeneca and Johnson & Johnson, which are also approved in the EU, are vector vaccines that are based on a harmless cold virus and recently made headlines because of rare post-vaccination brain thromboses. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday that the Commission was currently negotiating vaccine orders for the coming years, with contracts with manufacturers of mRNA vaccines taking precedence.