GSK is handing mRNA vaccine partner CureVac €400 million ($429 million) upfront to take over full rights to the influenza and Covid vaccine candidates they have been collaborating on, while walking away from several other programs.
As the biotech moves away from late-stage development, it’s also taking steps to “rightsize” — laying off 30% of its workforce, the vaccine biotech said in a separate release.
The move marks a “natural next step” and brings CureVac back to its roots of technology innovation, CEO Alexander Zehnder told Endpoints News. The biotech currently has around 1,000 employees.
“As part of the runoff to Covid and preparedness for the pandemic a few years ago, we built quite a large infrastructure – pandemic infrastructure – which we never really corrected,” he said.
GSK and CureVac first forged their partnership at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, with the goal of sharing development and commercialization. Under the previous deal, CureVac was in charge of manufacturing all the way to market.
All of those responsibilities now fall on GSK. The partners have previously reported Phase 2 data for flu and Covid vaccine candidates, and spoken about the potential for combinations. The flu portfolio also includes an avian flu candidate currently in Phase 1.
“This deal is all about taking full control of those vaccines which we think are the most promising and relevant for the deployment of mRNA,” a GSK spokesperson told Endpoints. The drugmaker will also continue to explore its own mRNA technology more broadly.
The spokesperson added that additional Phase 2 data on seasonal influenza will read out in the second half of 2024, and GSK still expects the first launch to take place around 2026, with the same guidance of more than £3 billion in peak year sales from flu and combination vaccines.
CureVac, meanwhile, will be free to move forward with or partner out preclinical vaccine programs against other, undisclosed infectious diseases that had been developed under the collaboration. It will also continue to focus on oncology, where it has one vaccine in the clinic and aims to bring two more into human testing by the end of 2025.
“The sweet spot for CureVac really is technology, research and early development,” Zehnder said. “Once it gets to later stages of development (…) our goal is to partner.”
Tony WoodThe flu and Covid programs have the potential to become “best-in-class” mRNA vaccines, GSK’s chief scientific officer Tony Wood said in a press release. It could pay CureVac another €1.05 billion in development, regulatory and sales milestone payments on top of tiered royalties in the high single to low teens range.
CureVac’s path forward
The majority of CureVac employees affected by the layoffs will be in operations, spanning manufacturing, medical affairs, pharmacovigilance and regulatory roles — positions that would’ve been needed under the previous pact, which required commercial-scale manufacturing and sales footprint.
“It’s never nice to have this kind of news, but I do believe we need to do it now out of a position of financial strength,” Zehnder said. The restructuring is expected to save personnel costs by €25 million and extend CureVac’s runway to 2028. It will also incur one-time charges of around €15 million.
Shares of the biotech $CVAC rose more than 20% in Wednesday premarket trading, a welcome surge after CureVac saw its stock price tumble almost 70% over the past year to a small fraction of its 2021 peak.
The CEO sees CureVac’s infectious disease and oncology focuses complementing each other, with infectious disease trials being shorter, less costly and less risky, with oncology showing “high promise.”
As with Covid and flu, it’s trailing Moderna and BioNTech, which have launched later-stage cancer trials. But it’s still early days for mRNA in oncology and there’s room for multiple players, Zehnder said.
“What really differentiates our platform is that we show very strong immune reactions at very low doses,” he said, adding: “There are not many companies left that have a platform, can do end-to-end with good IP.”
Editor’s note: Story updated to incorporate additional comments from GSK and CureVac stock reaction.