Bayer (ETR:BAYN) had planned to retool a facility in Wuppertal, Germany, to produce CureVac’s (NSDQ:CVAC) COVID-19 vaccine. But Leverkusen, Germany–headquartered Bayer has put those plans on ice, according to the German paper Leverkusener Anzeiger.
Bayer had planned on producing 160 million doses of the vaccine annually.
In June, CureVac reported that its COVID-19 vaccine was 48% efficacious in an international Phase 2b/3 study focused on various age groups. Despite having lower efficacy than the mRNA vaccines from rivals Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, CureVac had assumed in July that it would receive marketing authorization to distribute the vaccine in Europe.
The company announced it would withdraw its first-generation vaccine candidate, CVnCoV, from regulatory review at the European Medicines Agency. CureVac also canceled an existing advanced purchase agreement with the European Commission related to the CVnCoV vaccine.
Earlier this week, CureVac announced that it had begun developing a second-generation mRNA vaccine with its partner GSK (NYSE:GSK).
It projects that it could receive approval in the second quarter of 2022 at the earliest.
CureVac has also bolstered its partnership with GSK on the development of the second-generation CV2CoV vaccine.
In animal models, CV2CoV had immunogenicity up to ten times greater than the first-generation vaccine candidate.