CureVac Vaccine: Disappointing results, 47% efficacy

His clinical trial vaccine of the German biopharmaceutical company CureVac for the coronavirus did not bring smiles. Her mRNA vaccine was only 47% effective, one of the lowest reported by coronavirus vaccine manufacturers.

The phase 2b / 3 HERALD test, performed on approximately 40,000 volunteers in ten countries in South America and Europe, will continue as new Covid-19 cases gradually occur among participants. The final analysis of effectiveness is expected in two to three weeks, according to the New York Times and Reuters, citing the APE-MPE.

“We are moving fast for the final announcement. “We are still planning to apply for approval,” said Franz-Werner Haas, chief executive of the company, but vaccine expert Jacob Kierkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington called the results “disastrous.”

The company initially intends to seek approval from the European Medicines Agency (Coreper), as the European Union has agreed with CureVac to buy 405 million doses of the vaccine, if approved. It is now doubtful whether this order will go ahead. Independent experts consider the future of the vaccine difficult, as even if the effectiveness is finally announced to be somewhat higher, it will hardly reach the level of other vaccines.

“Its effectiveness is not going to change dramatically,” said Dr. Natalie Dean, a biostatistics expert at the University of Florida. It is recalled that the other mRNA vaccines of Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech are around 95% effective.

CureVac vaccine: Scientists surprised

The news disappointed those who had hoped that CureVac could supply state-of-the-art and low-income vaccines with state-of-the-art vaccines, as its own vaccine is refrigerated for months and is cheaper.

CureVac preliminary results were announced after the company had data on 135 volunteers who became ill with Covid-19.

An independent panel compared the number of patients who had been vaccinated with those who had received a placebo vaccine and found a 47% efficacy against the disease (mild or severe). By comparison, the flu vaccine has around 40% to 60%. Both the World Health Organization and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have set a 50% minimum efficacy limit for Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of a pandemic, with at least 70% considered desirable.

The low efficacy surprised scientists, as the CureVac vaccine is an mRNA and has also shown promising results in animal experiments and first human trials. “It’s to scratch your head,” Dean said.

How much did the mutations affect?

The head of the company, Dr. Haas attributed it to the large number of new coronavirus mutations in the countries where the vaccine was tested. Of the 124 cases of Covid-19 in the clinical trial that were genetically tested, only one was due to the original “Chinese” strain. 21% of the samples analyzed came from the new most contagious Lambda mutation that appeared in Peru.

As Haas said, this should be a “danger bell” for the threat posed by the new variants, in terms of the effectiveness of vaccines in general. “This is definitely a new Covid reality,” he said. He also said that, based on preliminary results, the CureVac vaccine provides less protection to those over 60 years of age than younger people.

However, although the high efficacy of 95% of the other mRNA vaccines was the result of clinical trials before the mutations appeared, the latest data from the real world, where new coronavirus strains are now available, show a relatively small reduction in the efficacy of the vaccines. Modern and Pfizer / BioNTech.

The shares of the Timbingen-based company, which planned to produce up to 300 million shares in 2021 and one billion in 2022, plunged almost 51% in the stock market, following the bad news.