Celonic and CureVac Announce Agreement to Manufacture over 100 Million Doses of CureVac’s COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate, CVnCoV

CureVac N.V. a biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of transformative medicines based on messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) and Celonic Group, a premium biopharmaceutical Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) specializing in the development and production of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) and mammalian cell line-expressed bio-therapeutics, today announced their partnership for the production of CureVac’s mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, CVnCoV.

The parties entered into a commercial supply agreement to produce CureVac’s coronavirus vaccine candidate at Celonic’s state-of-the-art commercial manufacturing facility for biologics and ATMPs, in Heidelberg, Germany. In total Celonic will be prepared to manufacture more than 100 million doses of CVnCoV. More than 50 million doses are expected to be produced before the end of 2021. Under the terms of the initial agreement, technology and knowledge transfer is already underway. The commercial supply agreement includes manufacturing of the mRNA drug substance as well as LNP formulation of the bulk drug product.

CureVac reaffirms an expected output capacity of its broad European manufacturing network of up to 300 million doses in 2021.

“Manufacturing of sufficient quantities of vaccine is critical to combating the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Florian von der Mülbe, Chief Production Officer of CureVac. “With this partnership, we are further extending our integrated European manufacturing network, reinforcing the overall production capacity for our COVID-19 vaccine candidate, CVnCoV.”

“Since the onset of the pandemic, Celonic has committed extensive breadth of complex bio-solutions development expertise and manufacturing resources to this global challenge,” added Dr. Konstantin Matentzoglu, Chief Executive Officer of Celonic. “We have invested heavily to support our partners in bringing novel COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines to patients, at an accelerated pace. Celonic is proud to collaborate with CureVac as part of an expansive manufacturing network in this global fight against COVID-19 by contributing to the production of its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, CVnCoV. With a dedicated and highly motivated team in place, Celonic is well positioned to have produced the first 50 million doses before end of 2021.”