Thursday, March 4th, 2021
To increase production
Curevac brings Novartis to the vaccine team
The biotech group Curevac is in the starting blocks for the mass production of its corona vaccine CVnCOV. As the newest partner, the Swiss company Novartis will also produce for Curevac. Together they already have big plans for this year.
The Tübingen-based biotech company Curevac has brought its next partner on board with Novartis. The Swiss group will start producing the vaccine candidate CVnCoV, said Curevac. The preparations for the start of production, for the technology transfer and the test runs have already begun. Novartis aims to produce up to 50 million cans by the end of 2021 and up to around 200 million cans in 2022.
Deliveries from the production site in Kundl in Austria are expected to begin in summer 2021. "Together with our new partner, we can significantly increase our production capacities and place our production network on an even broader basis," said Curevac board member Florian von der Mülbe. The company plans to produce up to 300 million vaccine doses this year and up to a billion doses in 2022.
In autumn 2020, Curevac started building a European network for vaccine production with several service partners. So far, Curevac has signed agreements with Bayer, Fareva, Wacker, Rentschler and others. Curevac started the pivotal trial for its vaccine with more than 35,000 participants in December. The company now assumes that the first results from the study will be available at the beginning of the second quarter. Because in the cases of infection among the test persons, the new, more contagious virus variants would also have to be taken into account, said a spokesman. "We need a certain number of cases from the individual virus variants so that we can see statistically relevant results."
Novartis also produces for Biontech and Pfizer
Novartis will manufacture the messenger RNA on which the vaccine is based and the pre-formulated active ingredient for Curevac. Novartis is already supporting Biontech and Pfizer with vaccine production. The corona vaccine from the two companies is to be bottled at the Novartis plant in Stein, Switzerland. The pharmaceutical giant from Basel sold its vaccines business to GlaxoSmithKline and CSL a few years ago.
The European Medicines Agency [EMA] started the rapid testing procedure for the Curevac vaccine in mid-February. The decision is based on the preliminary results of laboratory tests and clinical studies. According to the EMA, this makes it clear that the vaccine stimulates the production of antibodies against the coronavirus.
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