GSK and CureVac have announced they have entered into a new licensing agreement worth over €1.4bn to restructure their current collaboration to develop mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases.
The new deal will allow both companies to prioritise investment and focus on their respective mRNA development activities.
Since 2020, the companies have been working together to develop mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases, including vaccine candidates for seasonal influenza and COVID-19, utilising CureVac’s proprietary second-generation mRNA backbone.
Under the terms of the new agreement, GSK will gain full control of developing and manufacturing candidate vaccines and will have worldwide rights to commercialise them, while CureVac will retain exclusive rights to the addition of undisclosed and preclinically validated infectious disease targets from the prior collaboration, with the freedom to independently develop and partner mRNA vaccines in any other infectious disease or other indication.
CureVac will receive an upfront payment of €400m in addition to a further €1.05bn in development, regulatory and sales milestones, plus tiered royalties, which will replace all previous financial agreements from the prior collaboration agreement between both companies.
Commenting on the new agreement, GSK’s chief scientific officer, Tony Wood, commented: “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: “This new licensing agreement puts us in a strong financial position and enables us to focus on efforts [to build] a strong research and development pipeline.”
Last September, CureVac announced that its seasonal influenza mRNA vaccine candidate showed promise in the first phase of the combined phase 1/2 study conducted in collaboration with GSK to address four World Health Organization-recommended flu strains.
The study assessed a range of multivalent modified mRNA seasonal flu candidates, which were tested in 270 healthy adults aged 18 to 50 years old against an approved seasonal flu vaccine comparator.
Positive interim data results showed no safety concerns across all tested dose levels for the multivalent candidates and began phase 2 of the study later that year.