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CureVac expects to announce partnerships with vaccine developers and manufacturers in the coming weeks to ramp up capacity of its potential vaccine candidate.
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German biotech CureVac is setting up a European network to ramp up manufacturing of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine, allowing it to produce up to 300 million doses in 2021 and up to 600 million in 2022.
CureVac CVAC, -10.72% said in a statement on Tuesday that it will build a broad European vaccine manufacturing network using expertise and capacity in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Austria, as well as potentially Sweden, Poland, Italy and Ireland.
Tübingen-based CureVac expects to announce partnerships with vaccine developers and manufacturers in coming weeks.
“It is our goal to ramp up the production capacity of our vaccine candidate within a short period of time to ensure a stable supply,” said Dr. Florian von der Mülbe, CureVac’s chief production officer, in a statement.
CureVac is using the so-called messenger RNA approach, the same as rivals BioNTech BNTX, -5.01% and its partner Pfizer PFE, +1.84%, as well as Moderna MRNA, -4.90%, which instructs cells to create proteins to generate an immune response protecting against a virus.
No RNA vaccine has yet been approved by regulators.
Read: 5 things to know about BioNTech and the married couple developing the COVID-19 vaccine with Pfizer
CureVac’s announcement comes a day after the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, announced a new supply agreement with the German biotech for 405 million doses of its vaccine candidate.
“If the vaccine has proven safe and effective against COVID-19, every Member State will receive the vaccine at the same time, on a pro rata basis, and under the same conditions,” said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in a statement.
“This is the fifth contract with a pharmaceutical company for our COVID-19 vaccine portfolio. And we are working on a sixth one, with Moderna,” von der Leyen said, adding that she hoped to complete the contract shortly.
The Commission has already signed contracts with Janssen Pharmaceutica, a division of Johnson & Johnson JNJ, -0.99%, as well as with AstraZeneca AZN, -2.36%, Sanofi SNY, -0.78% and GSK GSK, -2.39%.
Last week, CureVac disclosed additional clinical data about how its COVID-19 vaccine candidate is performing in a Phase 1 clinical trial.
Read: CureVac’s COVID-19 vaccine shows immune response in Phase 1 trial
It had previously disclosed some clinical data from the trial on Nov. 2 showing that its experimental COVID-19 vaccine triggered a good immune response in humans, placing it on track to launch the final stage of testing before the end of 2020.
