BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

mRNA for the developing world

Why Gates Foundation picked CureVac to develop vaccines for developing world

March 16, 2015 7:00 AM UTC

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and CureVac GmbH found a win-win deal that allows Gates to fund development of vaccines that meet its requirements for developing low cost vaccines to prevent infectious diseases in the developing world, while CureVac gets a manufacturing facility to meet its R&D and commercial needs.

On March 5, the charity made a $52 million equity investment in CureVac and partnered with the mRNA company to provide an undisclosed amount of non-dilutive funding to develop mRNA-based prophylactic vaccines against infectious diseases prevalent in the developing world. In parallel, CureVac's major shareholder dievini Hopp Biotech invested an additional $24 million...