The European Investment Bank (EIB) and CureVac, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of transformative medicines based on optimised mRNA, entered into a €75 million loan agreement to support the company’s ongoing development of vaccines against infectious diseases, including its vaccine candidate CVnCoV aimed at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections.
In addition, the loan is expected to support the Company’s efforts to expand its existing Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certified production capabilities and accelerate the completion of its fourth production site in Tübingen, Germany.
The EIB financing will be provided in three €25 million tranches upon completion of pre-defined milestones.
CureVac’s mRNA technology platform has believed to have shown potential in the clinical development and production of mRNA based vaccines and therapeutics. The company’s proprietary RNAoptimizer platform aims to optimize the properties of mRNA medicines based on its three core pillars: protein design, mRNA optimization and mRNA delivery.
“It does not need a pandemic to prove that new vaccines can be breakthroughs for public health,” said Ambroise Fayolle, EIB Vice-President in charge of innovation and health. “But in times like ours it becomes clear just how important they are to keep societies running globally. In fact, the only way to end the dramatic situation the world is facing since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic would be a safe and effective vaccine. Thanks to our cooperation with the European Commission, we can finance more and more innovative biotech and medtech companies, such as CureVac, in their research and development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics solutions. This is an added value of Europe, and the EIB does everything it can to maximise this value for the sake of people.”
Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said: “The coronavirus will be with us, as long as we do not have a vaccine against it. This is why our work on this front, together with international actors, is so crucial. Recently we have presented our vaccines strategy to accelerate the development, manufacturing and deployment of vaccines against the novel coronavirus. And since the beginning of the pandemic, we increased the funding for the Infectious Diseases Finance Facility by €400 million to allow the EIB to process a higher volume of projects addressing this disease. With our support to CureVac we accelerate our efforts to find safe and effective solutions for everyone in Europe and globally.”

CureVac’s mRNA technology platform has believed to have shown potential in the clinical development and production of mRNA based vaccines and therapeutics.