Germany-based messenger RNA (mRNA) drug developer CureVac closed a $640m financing round on Tuesday that included $171m from pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, which signed a strategic partnership with it this week.
The round includes $343m in the form of the funding commitment made by German development bank KfW last month and $126m in additional funding from investors including sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority.
CureVac is developing therapeutics designed to leverage mRNA in order to induce different levels of response from the human immune system to specific protein antigens.
The approach could result in immunotherapies used to treat a range of disease including cancer, as well as vaccines for infectious diseases like rabies and, potentially, Covid-19. The company has already advanced a potential Covid-19 vaccine into phase 1 clinical trials.
The close of the round increased CureVac’s overall funding to about $900m since it was spun out of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in 2000.
Eli Lilly supplied $53m in equity funding for the company through a 2017 strategic partnership agreement, and cancer therapeutics developer Genmab invested a further $22m in connection with another strategic partnership, in December 2019.
Dievini Hopp BioTech, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Baillie Gifford, Sigma Group, LBBW Asset Management Investmentgesellshaft, Landeskreditbank Baden-Württemberg, Chartwave, Coppel Family, Northview, DH Capital, OH Beteiligungen and Leonardo Venture are among CureVac’s earlier investors.
