After Pfizer, GSK and CureVac are launching in the race for Covid variants vaccine! Both laboratories – one British, the other German – announced this Wednesday February 3 they will work together in order to come up with a “candidate vaccine to address emerging variants” around the world, naming the UK strain and the South-African strain.
As for the vaccine itself, it is expected to be a messenger RNA vaccine and to be ready by 2022, depending on meaningful results and approval for marketing from the health authorities. It is expected to target emerging variants, as well as those that could develop and spread afterward.
The collaboration also plans to give €150 million to CureVac, enabling the UK laboratory to get the rights of this novel vaccine, excluding in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. “We believe that next generation vaccines will be crucial in the continued fight against COVID-19” GSK Chie Executive Officer Emma Walmsley explained.
In a release, the British company also said they will help – prior to the agreement – the German laboratory in the manufacturing of another Covid vaccine currently completing phase 3 of the clinical trial. All in all 100 million doses of this first vaccine will be manufactured by GSK, as the one developed with Sanofi has been delayed.
