CureVac To Co-Develop mRNA-Based Vaccine With Sanofi Pasteur
German clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company CureVac declared that it has signed into an exclusive license agreement with Sanofi Pasteur to develop and market an mRNA-based prophylactic vaccine against an unrevealed target pathogen.
RNActive Prophylactic Vaccines are CureVac’s new technology for the production of mRNA-based vaccines designed to resist high temperatures and inadvertent freezing. The vaccines are based on the optimized, antigen-encoding, and complexed mRNA molecules that trigger the immune system to action. CureVac develops vaccines for prophylactic and therapeutic use against cancer and infectious diseases.
As part of the commercial license agreement, Sanofi Pasteur will shoulder all funding for research, development, manufacturing, and commercialization of the RNActive vaccine. The company will gain exclusive global rights for the product. CureVac will receive a confidential upfront payment from Sanofi Pasteur for an option exercise plus payment for extending the option term to cover other potential clinical development activities for other pathogens. CureVac will also be eligible for up to €150.5 million in milestone payments.
Nicolas Burdin, Head of Discovery Research at Sanofi Pasteur in France, said that the company’s partnership with CureVac advances its objective of discovering vaccines for patient needs. “Accessing CureVac's innovative mRNA technology may allow Sanofi Pasteur to exploit a platform that can be more broadly applicable across indications to develop vaccines, as the RNActive technology is expected to complement conventional technologies.”
Ingmar Hoerr, CEO of CureVac, said, “We are very pleased that our RNActive technology platform has reached all significant milestones in this important collaboration with Sanofi Pasteur, the largest company entirely dedicated to vaccines. Our mRNA-based approach shows significant advantages for the development of vaccines, particularly for infectious diseases, such as thermostability and low cost of goods after up-scaling.”
The new agreement builds on the ongoing four-year $33.1 million collaboration of CureVAc with Sanofi Pasteur and In-Cell-Art, co-funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in November 2011.