The Commission also says a deal with Moderna’s mRNA vaccine – which reported 94.5% efficacy in its interim analysis yesterday - is expected soon.
The deal with CureVac is for 225 million doses with the option for an additional purchase of 180 million doses.
CureVac's mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate is an optimized, non-chemically modified mRNA, encoding the prefusion stabilized full-length spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The two-dose vaccine is currently in a Phase 2a clinicla trial in Peru and Panama. CureVac plans to initiate the pivotal Phase 2b/3 clinical study before end of 2020.
Phase 1 interim data reported in November showed that CVnCoV was generally well tolerated across all tested doses and induced strong antibody responses in addition to first indication of T cell activation.
Headquartered in Tübingen, Germany, CureVac received funding from the European Union and the European Investment bank earlier this year for the development of the vaccine candidate.
CureVac is currently expanding manufacturing capacities for large-scale manufacturing of the vaccine. Doses will be produced at the company's in-house GMP-certified manufacturing site in Germany, and across a European manufacturing network.
The European Commission's deal with CureVac represents the fifth vaccine deal it has made to date. It has also conculded 'successful exploratory talks' with Moderna and is working on a deal with the US giant, and saying it hopes to finalise a deal soon.
