Late last year, GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) and Sanofi (NYSE:SNY) announced that their joint COVID-19 vaccine was delayed.
Now, GlaxoSmithKline is hooking up with Germany-headquartered CureVac (NSDQ:CVAC) to develop a COVID-19 vaccine that can target multiple variants of the virus simultaneously. GSK plans on spending €150 million on the project, paying the first half to CureVac initially and the latter half as a milestone payment.
For GSK, the project also entails a shift in viral platform. Its previous vaccine candidate was an adjuvanted recombinant protein-based COVID-19 vaccine.
The new project, however, will use the mRNA platform that Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) and Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) have deployed in their vaccines, which were the first to win FDA authorization in the U.S.
The two companies plan to commercially launch an mRNA vaccine in 2022, pending regulatory approval.
GSK will also work with CureVac to produce up to 100 million doses of its first-generation mRNA vaccine. CureVac launched a Phase 2B/3 study to investigate the two-dose vaccine — known as CVnCoV – in late 2020.
The two companies envision that CVnCoV will be available as a general vaccine as well as a booster for recipients of early COVID-19 vaccines.