Why did the CureVac vaccine splash
CureVac's Covid mRNA vaccine fails the test, only 47% effective. The Financial Times article
German pharmaceutical company CureVac has revealed disappointing results from trials of its Covid-19 mRNA vaccine, dampening hopes that the vaccine could help meet the global need for effective inoculations.
CureVac Wednesday said that its vaccine was effective in 47 percent to protect against coronavirus in an interim analysis of its evidence at an advanced stage, making it one of the least effective vaccines against the coronavirus tested – writes the Ft .
US pharmaceutical company Novavax said this week that its protein-based vaccine is 90 percent effective at fighting coronavirus, while Moderna and BioNTech / Pfizer vaccines are 95 percent effective at tackling the original strain of the virus. .
Shares of Nasdaq-listed CureVac plunged 50 percent in the New York after-market on Wednesday.
The company attributed the unsatisfactory results to strains of the virus circulating in 10 countries in Latin America and Europe, where the tests were carried out.
In its 40,000-person study, CureVac said 13 variants were found in volunteers, with more than half of coronavirus cases being caused by variants of concern.
However, data from the UK this week showed that BioNTech / Pfizer's two-dose mRNA, or messenger ribonucleic acid, vaccine was 96% effective in preventing hospitalization of people infected with the Delta variant, which was first identified in India.
This week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added the Delta strain to its list of variants of concern.
CureVac has partnered with German conglomerate Bayer to produce its coronavirus vaccine and has a deal with British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline to create a next generation of vaccines.
Weak test results cast doubt on the feasibility of these projects. CureVac aims to produce 300 million doses of its vaccine this year and 1 billion in 2022.
The company's stock has risen since its initial public offering in August 2020 as investors rushed to support the vaccine maker. CureVac had a cash position of € 1.3 billion at the end of last year.
“While we were hoping for a stronger interim result, we recognize that demonstrating high efficacy in this unprecedented wide diversity of variants is a challenge,” said Franz-Werner Haas, CureVac CEO. He added that the plethora of variants "underscores the importance of developing next-generation vaccines."
The vaccine is also being studied in the UK as part of a booster study which involves administering several shots to people who have already received two doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca or BioNTech / Pfizer vaccines.
As with the Moderna and BioNTech / Pfizer vaccines, CureVac's vaccine uses mRNA but its mRNA is natural and unmodified. Its vaccine also uses a lower dose, 12 micrograms compared to Moderna's 100mcg and BioNTech / Pfizer's 30mcg, which results in lower manufacturing cost, and is stable at conventional refrigerator temperatures.
CureVac said it will continue trials of its two-dose mRNA vaccine and decide on the most appropriate regulatory path after evaluating the final trial data.
(Extract from the foreign press review by Epr Comunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/perche-il-vaccino-curevac-ha-fatto-splash/ on Sat, 19 Jun 2021 05:34:54 +0000.