GSK, CureVac restructure collaboration into new licensing agreement for mRNA vaccine development

UK — GSK plc and CureVac N.V. have restructured their existing collaboration into a new licensing agreement, allowing each company to prioritize investment and focus on their respective mRNA development activities.

This agreement represents the latest step in GSK’s ongoing investment in vaccine platform technologies, aiming to match the best platform to each pathogen in order to develop best-in-class vaccines.

Under the terms of the new agreement, GSK will assume full control of developing and manufacturing these candidate vaccines, as well as gain worldwide rights to commercialize them.

 Furthermore, GSK continues to enhance its mRNA capabilities through investments and partnerships, including advancements in AI/ML-based sequence optimization, nanoparticle design, and manufacturing processes.

In return, CureVac will receive an upfront payment of €400 million (US$431.976 million), in addition to up to €1.05 billion (US$1.133 billion) in development, regulatory, and sales milestones, along with tiered royalties ranging from the high single to low teens.

Notably, the new agreement supersedes all previous financial considerations from the prior collaboration agreement between GSK and CureVac.

CureVac will retain exclusive rights to additional undisclosed and preclinically validated infectious disease targets from the prior collaboration.

Moreover, the company will have the freedom to independently develop and partner mRNA vaccines for any other infectious diseases or indications.

 It is also worth noting that the new agreement will not affect CureVac’s ongoing patent litigation against Pfizer/BioNTech.

Commenting on the new agreement, Tony Wood, GSK’s chief scientific officer, expressed his excitement about their flu and COVID-19 programs and the opportunity to develop best-in-class mRNA vaccines that could significantly change the standard of care.

He emphasized that this new agreement will enable GSK to apply its capabilities, partnerships, and intellectual property to CureVac’s technology, thereby accelerating the delivery of these promising vaccines.

On his part, Alexander Zehnder, Chief Executive Officer of CureVac, highlighted that the collaboration with GSK has been instrumental in developing promising, late clinical-stage vaccine candidates leveraging their proprietary mRNA platform.

He also emphasized that this new licensing agreement strengthens CureVac’s financial position, allowing it to focus on building a robust R&D pipeline.

Since 2020, GSK and CureVac have been working together to develop mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases.

Through this collaboration, they currently have vaccine candidates for seasonal influenza and COVID-19 in phase II clinical development and for avian influenza in phase I clinical development.

 All candidates are based on CureVac’s proprietary second-generation mRNA backbone.

Data generated to date for these candidate vaccines are promising, demonstrating their potential to be best-in-class new vaccines.

However, it should be noted that the completion of the new agreement remains subject to certain antitrust and regulatory approvals, as well as customary closing conditions.

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