Is CureVac ineffective?
The German CureVac vaccine failed at the intermediate stage of testing
Elena Gunkel, Deutsche Welle
The CVnCoV candidate vaccine from the German manufacturer CureVac, according to the results of the second phase of intermediate trials, did not achieve the expected effectiveness results. The biopharmaceutical company with headquarters in the university city of Tübingen announced this on Wednesday, June 17.
"In conditions unprecedented to date, associated with the presence of at least 13 variants of the virus, in a group of test participants, according to the results of an interim analysis, a preliminary effectiveness of 47 percent was revealed in relation to COVID-19 disease of all severity levels. Thus, statistically, the candidate vaccine did not meet the criteria for recognizing the trials as successful," the document says. According to CureVac, the first interim analyses showed that the effectiveness of the vaccine depends on the age of the test participants and the strains of the virus.
"Due to the presence of a large number of variants of the virus, it is very important to develop second–generation vaccines, since new variants appear again and again," said Franz-Werner Haas, head of CureVac, in this regard.
The second phase of intermediate trials of the CureVac candidate vaccine took place in several countries, with 40,000 volunteers participating.
WHO recommends using vaccines with an efficacy above 50%, and the indicators of many of the drugs already approved by the organization are much higher than this mark.
The collapse of CureVac shares in the United States In the summer of 2020, the placement of its shares by CureVac on the Nasdaq American stock exchange caused euphoria among investors, however, after the announcement on June 16 of the failure of tests at the intermediate stage, their price fell by 52 percent.
Meanwhile, the Independent Data Monitoring and Safety Committee of Research Subjects (DSMB) in the USA, the high level of safety of the candidate vaccine CVnCoV has been confirmed. It is expected that the final data on the effectiveness of the drug will be received within the coming weeks. The study of the effectiveness of the candidate vaccine will continue until the final results are obtained, the manufacturer's message states.
Hopes for the success of the CureVac vaccine In Germany and throughout the European Union had high hopes for the CureVac vaccine. In November 2020, the EU pre–ordered 405 million doses from this company - more than from any other manufacturer. In addition, Brussels provided a loan of 80 million euros to CureVac in the spring of 2020, and the German government acquired shares of the company for 300 million euros. All this happened after rumors surfaced that former US President Donald Trump allegedly tried to secure exclusive rights to use this vaccine in the United States for a large sum in advance.
The CVnCoV drug from CureVac should become the third coronavirus vaccine based on mRNA technology, which is considered a new word in pharmaceuticals, but has never been widely used before. BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, already registered for use in the EU, have been created using the same technology.
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