GSK, CureVac restructure existing collaboration into new licensing agreement

GSK (GSK) and CureVac (CVAC) announced they have restructured their existing collaboration into a new licensing agreement, allowing each company to prioritize 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 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 commercialize the candidate vaccines. CureVac will receive an upfront payment of EUR 400M and up to an additional EUR 1.05B 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. Completion of the new agreement remains subject to certain antitrust and regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.