REG - GSK PLC - GSK and CureVac collaboration restructured

GSKAnnouncement

03/07/2024 07:00

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RNS Number : 8840U  GSK PLC  03 July 2024

Issued: 3 July 2024, London UK; Tübingen, Germany/ Boston, MA, USA

 

GSK and CureVac to restructure collaboration into new licensing agreement

 

·   GSK acquires full rights to develop, manufacture and commercialise
globally mRNA candidate vaccines for influenza and COVID-19, including
combinations

·      CureVac receives €400 million upfront and up to an additional
€1.05 billion in development, regulatory and sales milestone payments as
well as tiered royalties; all previous financial considerations from the prior
collaboration agreement replaced

 

GSK plc (LSE/NYSE: GSK) and CureVac N.V. (Nasdaq: CVAC) today announced they
have restructured their existing collaboration into a new licensing agreement,
allowing each company to prioritise investment and focus their respective mRNA
development activities.

 

Since 2020, GSK and CureVac have worked together to develop mRNA vaccines for
infectious diseases. Through this collaboration, GSK and CureVac currently
have vaccine candidates for seasonal influenza and COVID-19 in phase II and
avian influenza in phase I clinical development. All candidates are based on
CureVac's proprietary second-generation mRNA backbone. Data generated to date
for these candidate vaccines are promising and demonstrate their potential to
be best-in-class new vaccines.

 

Under the terms of the new agreement, GSK will assume full control of
developing and manufacturing these candidate vaccines. GSK will have worldwide
rights to commercialise the candidate vaccines. The agreement represents the
latest step in GSK's ongoing investment in vaccine platform technologies,
matching the best platform to each pathogen to develop best-in-class vaccines.
mRNA is an adaptable vaccine technology with demonstrated application in
emerging and constantly changing viral pathogens due to its ability to support
rapid strain change. GSK continues to develop and optimise its mRNA
capabilities through investments and partnerships, including in AI/ML-based
sequence optimisation, nanoparticle design and manufacturing.

 

CureVac will receive an upfront payment of €400 million and up to an
additional €1.05 billion in development, regulatory and sales milestones and
tiered royalties in the high single to low teens range. The new agreement
replaces all previous financial considerations from the prior collaboration
agreement between GSK and CureVac.  CureVac further retains exclusive rights
to the additional undisclosed and preclinically validated infectious disease
targets from the prior collaboration together with the freedom to
independently develop and partner mRNA vaccines in any other infectious
disease or other indication. CureVac's ongoing patent litigation against
Pfizer/BioNTech is unaffected by the new agreement.

 

Tony Wood, Chief Scientific Officer, GSK said: "We are excited about our
flu/COVID-19 programmes and the opportunity to develop best-in-class mRNA
vaccines to change the standard of care. With this new agreement, we will
apply GSK's capabilities, partnerships and intellectual property to CureVac's
technology, to deliver these promising vaccines at pace."

 

Alexander Zehnder, Chief Executive Officer, CureVac said: "The collaboration
with GSK has been instrumental in developing promising, late clinical-stage
vaccine candidates, leveraging our proprietary mRNA platform. This new
licensing agreement puts us in a strong financial position and enables us to
focus on efforts in building a strong R&D pipeline."

 

Completion of the new agreement remains subject to certain antitrust and
regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

 

About GSK

GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology,
and talent to get ahead of disease together. Find out more at gsk.com.

 

About CureVac

CureVac (Nasdaq: CVAC) is a pioneering multinational biotech company founded
in 2000 to advance the field of messenger RNA (mRNA) technology for
application in human medicine. In more than two decades of developing,
optimizing, and manufacturing this versatile biological molecule for medical
purposes, CureVac has introduced and refined key underlying technologies that
were essential to the production of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, and is
currently laying the groundwork for application of mRNA in new therapeutic
areas of major unmet need. CureVac is leveraging mRNA technology, combined
with advanced omics and computational tools, to design and develop
off-the-shelf and personalized cancer vaccine product candidates. It also
develops programs in prophylactic vaccines and in treatments that enable the
human body to produce its own therapeutic proteins. Headquartered in
Tübingen, Germany, CureVac also operates sites in the Netherlands, Belgium,
Switzerland, and the U.S. Further information can be found at www.curevac.com
(http://www.curevac.com) .

 

 GSK enquiries
 Media:               Tim Foley          +44 (0) 20 8047 5502  (London)
                      Simon Moore        +44 (0) 20 8047 5502  (London)
                      Kathleen Quinn     +1 202 603 5003       (Washington DC)
                      Alison Hunt        +1 540 742 3391       (Washington DC)

 Investor Relations:  Nick Stone         +44 (0) 7717 618834   (London)
                      James Dodwell      +44 (0) 20 8047 2406  (London)
                      Mick Readey        +44 (0) 7990 339653   (London)
                      Josh Williams      +44 (0) 7385 415719   (London)
                      Camilla Campbell   +44 (0) 7803 050238   (London)
                      Steph Mountifield  +44 (0) 7796 707505   (London)
                      Jeff McLaughlin    +1 215 751 7002       (Philadelphia)
                      Frannie DeFranco   +1 215 751 4855       (Philadelphia)

 

 

 CureVac Media Contact                                          CureVac Investor Relations Contact

 Patrick Perez, Junior Manager Public Relations                 Dr. Sarah Fakih, Vice President Corporate Communications and Investor

                                                              Relations
 CureVac, Tübingen, Germany

                                                              CureVac, Tübingen, Germany
 T: +49 7071 9883-1831

                                                              T: +49 7071 9883-1298
 patrick.perez@curevac.com (mailto:patrick.perez@curevac.com)

                                                              M: +49 160 90 496949

                                                                sarah.fakih@curevac.com (mailto:sarah.fakih@curevac.com)

 

 

 

Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements
GSK cautions investors that any forward-looking statements or projections made
by GSK, including those made in this announcement, are subject to risks and
uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those
projected. Such factors include, but are not limited to, those described under
Item 3.D "Risk factors" in GSK's Annual Report on Form 20-F for 2023, and
GSK's Q1 Results for 2024.

 

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