Failed vaccine have more than halved the stock market value of Curevac

Failed effectiveness targets of the corona vaccine candidate from Curevac have more than halved the stock market value of the Tübingen-based company. Before the trading day, the stocks at the broker Lang & Schwarz recently fell by 56 percent to 34.75 euros. Curecvac had admitted in a mandatory stock market announcement on Wednesday evening that its own vaccine candidate CVnCoV had only achieved a preliminary effectiveness of 47 percent against corona disease "of any severity" in an interim analysis. In doing so, he did not meet the specified statistical success criteria. The first-generation vaccine candidate is in the final stages of clinical development. Like the vaccines from Biontech / Pfizer and Moderna, the agent is based on the new technology of messenger RNA (mRNA). However, their studies took place before new virus variants appeared. Curevac works with Bayer. The European Union has secured up to 405 million doses of the Curevac vaccine. In Germany, the Ministry of Health recently announced that the drug would only be included in the planning for the vaccination campaign after approval. In this quarter the delivery of 1.4 million vaccine doses was canceled. Chancellor Angela Merkel defended the company on Thursday last week because of the delays. Until the beginning of June it had been said that the company expected - depending on the clinical study data - the approval of its vaccine candidate in the EU at least for the second quarter. But shortly afterwards it was announced that the proceedings would be further delayed. Curevac CEO Franz-Werner Haas announced that they had hoped for stronger results in the interim analysis. But continue the current study until the final analysis. "The final effectiveness could still change." SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach tweeted: "It's a shame, the team from Tübingen deserved success."