Issued: 3 July 2024, London UK;
Tübingen, Germany/ Boston, MA, USA
GSK
and CureVac to restructure collaboration into new licensing
agreement
· GSK acquires full rights to develop, manufacture and
commercialise globally mRNA candidate vaccines for influenza and
COVID-19, including combinations
· CureVac receives €400 million upfront and up to an additional
€1.05 billion in development, regulatory and sales milestone
payments as well as tiered royalties; all previous financial
considerations from the prior collaboration agreement
replaced
GSK plc (LSE/NYSE: GSK) and CureVac
N.V. (Nasdaq: CVAC) today announced they have restructured their
existing collaboration into a new licensing agreement, allowing
each company to prioritise investment and focus their respective
mRNA development activities.
Since 2020, GSK and CureVac have
worked together to develop mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases.
Through this collaboration, GSK and CureVac currently have vaccine
candidates for seasonal influenza and COVID-19 in phase II and
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
and demonstrate their potential to be best-in-class new
vaccines.
Under the terms of the new
agreement, GSK will assume full control of developing and
manufacturing these candidate vaccines. GSK will have worldwide
rights to commercialise the candidate vaccines. The agreement represents the latest step in GSK's ongoing
investment in vaccine platform technologies, matching the best
platform to each pathogen to develop best-in-class vaccines. mRNA
is an adaptable vaccine technology with demonstrated application in
emerging and constantly changing viral pathogens due to its ability
to support rapid strain change. GSK
continues to develop and optimise its mRNA capabilities through
investments and partnerships, including in AI/ML-based sequence
optimisation, nanoparticle design and manufacturing.
CureVac will receive an upfront
payment of €400 million and up to an additional €1.05 billion in
development, regulatory and sales milestones and tiered royalties
in the high single to low teens range. The new agreement replaces
all previous financial considerations from the prior collaboration
agreement between GSK and CureVac. CureVac further retains
exclusive rights to the additional undisclosed and preclinically
validated infectious disease targets from the prior collaboration
together with the freedom to independently develop and partner mRNA
vaccines in any other infectious disease or other indication.
CureVac's ongoing patent litigation against Pfizer/BioNTech is
unaffected by the new agreement.
Tony Wood, Chief Scientific Officer, GSK said:
"We are excited about our flu/COVID-19 programmes
and the opportunity to develop best-in-class mRNA vaccines to
change the standard of care. With this new agreement, we will apply
GSK's capabilities, partnerships and intellectual property to
CureVac's technology, to deliver these promising vaccines at
pace."
Alexander Zehnder, Chief Executive Officer, CureVac
said: "The collaboration with GSK
has been instrumental in developing promising,
late clinical-stage vaccine candidates, leveraging our
proprietary mRNA platform. This new licensing agreement puts us in
a strong financial position and enables us to focus on efforts in
building a strong R&D pipeline."
Completion of the new agreement
remains subject to certain antitrust and regulatory approvals and
customary closing conditions.
About GSK
GSK is a global biopharma company
with a purpose to unite science, technology, and talent to get
ahead of disease together. Find out more at gsk.com.
About CureVac
CureVac (Nasdaq: CVAC) is a
pioneering multinational biotech company founded in 2000 to advance
the field of messenger RNA (mRNA) technology for application in
human medicine. In more than two decades of developing, optimizing,
and manufacturing this versatile biological molecule for medical
purposes, CureVac has introduced and refined key underlying
technologies that were essential to the production of mRNA vaccines
against COVID-19, and is currently laying the groundwork for
application of mRNA in new therapeutic areas of major unmet need.
CureVac is leveraging mRNA technology, combined with advanced omics
and computational tools, to design and develop off-the-shelf and
personalized cancer vaccine product candidates. It also develops
programs in prophylactic vaccines and in treatments that enable the
human body to produce its own therapeutic proteins. Headquartered
in Tübingen, Germany, CureVac also operates sites in the
Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and the U.S. Further information
can be found at www.curevac.com.
GSK
enquiries
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Media:
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Tim Foley
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+44 (0) 20 8047 5502
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(London)
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Simon Moore
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+44 (0) 20 8047 5502
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(London)
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Kathleen Quinn
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+1 202 603 5003
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(Washington DC)
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Alison Hunt
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+1 540 742 3391
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(Washington DC)
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Investor Relations:
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Nick Stone
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+44 (0) 7717 618834
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(London)
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James Dodwell
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+44 (0) 20 8047 2406
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(London)
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Mick Readey
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+44 (0) 7990 339653
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(London)
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Josh Williams
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+44 (0) 7385 415719
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(London)
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Camilla Campbell
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+44 (0) 7803 050238
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(London)
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Steph Mountifield
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+44 (0) 7796 707505
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(London)
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Jeff McLaughlin
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+1 215 751 7002
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(Philadelphia)
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Frannie DeFranco
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+1 215 751 4855
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(Philadelphia)
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CureVac Media Contact
Patrick Perez, Junior Manager Public
Relations
CureVac, Tübingen,
Germany
T: +49 7071 9883-1831
patrick.perez@curevac.com
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CureVac Investor Relations Contact
Dr. Sarah Fakih, Vice President
Corporate Communications and Investor Relations
CureVac, Tübingen,
Germany
T: +49 7071 9883-1298
M: +49 160 90 496949
sarah.fakih@curevac.com
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Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking
statements
GSK cautions
investors that any forward-looking statements or projections made
by GSK, including those made in this announcement, are subject to
risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ
materially from those projected. Such factors include, but are not
limited to, those described under Item 3.D "Risk factors" in GSK's
Annual Report on Form 20-F for 2023, and GSK's Q1 Results for
2024.
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