Elon Musk likes to think big. Not even space is too far away for him. Now the Tesla boss is announcing a company at the micro level: for the German biotech company Curevac, he wants to build mini factories that can quickly produce huge amounts of a corona vaccine.
According to CEO Elon Musk, US electric car maker Tesla is working with German biotech company Curevac on the construction of decentralized vaccine production facilities. "As a side project, Tesla is building RNA mini factories for Curevac and possibly others," Musk said on Twitter. This is done at the German mechanical engineering subsidiary Tesla Grohmann. Musk said nothing more. Curevac, which is researching a coronavirus vaccine and which the federal government had recently acquired, and Tesla itself were initially unsuccessful.
The German biotech company wants to develop mobile, automated production units for the cell messenger mRNA, which it calls "printers" and which Musk has now called "RNA mini factories". They are said to be able to produce vaccine candidates and other mRNA-based therapies.
The project, which is also supported financially by the international vaccination initiative CEPI, was announced by Curevac in early 2019. At that time it was said that this was done in cooperation with several international organizations and an additional partner from the field of mechanical engineering. An insider familiar with Curevac said that Tesla subsidiary Grohmann and Curevac had been working together on the RNA printers for a while.
This production unit for the production of messenger RNA (mRNA), on which the Curevac vaccines are based, is intended to enable fast delivery on site in regions where an epidemic breaks out. If Curevac is successful with its coronavirus vaccine candidate and receives approval, the Tübingen-based company already has production sites with official approval in Germany that could produce hundreds of millions of doses.
. (tagsToTranslate) Economy (t) Tesla Motors (t) Elon Musk (t) Vaccination (t) Corona crisis