2024-07-03 10:57:26
The company is selling the rights to its failed corona vaccine. Nevertheless, Curevac is planning massive job cuts.
The German biotech company Curevac has sold all rights to its failed mRNA vaccine candidate against Covid-19 and flu to the British pharmaceutical company GSK. As the “Handelsblatt” reports, Curevac will receive an upfront payment of 400 million euros for this. “The new license agreement puts us in a strong financial position and enables us to focus on building a strong R&D pipeline,” said Curevac CEO Alexander Zehnder. In addition to the upfront payment, success-related milestone payments and license payments could flow to Curevac.
Despite this windfall, the company announced that it wanted to lay off around 30 percent of its 1,100 employees. Back in the spring, Curevec announced that it wanted to cut around 150 jobs over the course of the year, and now it plans to cut more than twice as many. According to Handelsblatt, the reason for this is restructuring measures. Following the announcement, the share price rose by 25 percent.
Curevac and GSK had already agreed to cooperate on the development of mRNA vaccines against infectious diseases in 2020. An equity investment of 150 million euros by GSK in Curevac and a one-off payment of 120 million were agreed, according to the “Handelsblatt”. According to Curevac, the new deal replaces all previous financial considerations from the previous cooperation agreement.