Thread by @ChadBown

CureVac's COVID-19 mRNA vaccine may not be salvageable. However, the company's brand new manufacturing supply chain - capable of delivering 1 billion doses - should be. But doing so requires creative industry / policymaker collaboration.

My latest 1/ 🧵
piie.com/blogs/realtime…

In mid-June, CureVac recorded surprisingly poor results in final-stage clinical trials of its COVID-19 mRNA vaccine candidate.

The news that the vaccine had an efficacy of just 47 percent was devastating... 2/

reuters.com/business/healt…

On April 15, CureVac had announced its supply chain was on track to manufacture 300 million doses of its mRNA vaccine by the end of 2021 and another 1 billion doses in 2022, upon regulatory approval.

The June news meant over 1bn doses might be lost... 3/
fiercepharma.com/pharma/europe-…

The bad news of 47% efficacy came alongside the Johnson & Johnson announcement that it has to cut projected output of its (SINGLE shot) vaccine by 400-500 million doses in 2021... 4/

reuters.com/business/healt…

Inoculating the world against COVID-19 may require almost 14 billion doses, a number that could rise if variants require booster shots.

The world could hardly afford one more vaccine manufacturing setback on CureVac’s scale... 5/

https://twitter.com/ChadBown/status/1422890823033761796?s=20

Like others, CureVac benefited from considerable public support in 2020 to develop its COVID-19 vaccine, support clinical trials, and create a manufacturing supply chain.

• CEPI $8.3m
• Germany €300m (23% stake)
• European Investment Bank €75m loan
• Germany €252m

6/

CureVac created from scratch a complex production network to ultimately manufacture its vaccine.

It contracted seven sites run by seven companies in four countries to manufacture its active pharmaceutical ingredient and mRNA. Two plants in France would bottle it... 7/

News that CureVac's candidate had 47% efficacy was devastating ALSO because of the massive work CureVac put into creating that vaccine supply chain.

Can those 1 billion doses be saved by repurposing the supply chain to manufacture another (mRNA?) vaccine instead? 🤔🤓🤔8/

There are LOADS of pandemic-era examples of OTHER pharmaceutical companies making big reallocations of resources to help quickly scale up facilities to manufacture other brand new COVID-19 vaccines.... 9/

To be fair, repurposing the CureVac vaccine supply chain would not be easy.

CureVac and its contractors would need to work out terms for licensing the COVID-19 vaccine technology from some other firm, like a BioNTech or Moderna... 10/

Though, policymakers should support it.

The German government and European Commission have come out against simply waiving COVID-19 vaccine patents.

They have come out in favor of getting companies to share their IP within existing WTO rules, like this... 11/

In exchange for their help, policymakers should obtain commitments from companies in a revamped CureVac network to allocate a hefty share of the 1 billion doses to the COVAX facility for distribution to lower-income countries....12/

gavi.org/covax-facility

Time is of the essence. Even if all agreed:

• European Medicines Agency needs to investigate and certify the new production process
• Plants may need to acquire some specialized inputs to make the new vaccine, perhaps from COVAX Marketplace
cepi.net/the-covax-mark…

The company's initial attempt at developing an effective COVID-19 vaccine may have failed. But CureVac's equally important supply chain work on behalf of global public health should not be allowed to go to waste.

ENDS/
piie.com/blogs/realtime…