Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.US) announced on Wednesday that it is restructuring its partnership with German biotech company CureVac (CVAC.US) and will completely control and take over several vaccines jointly developed by the two companies.
It was learned from the WiseNews app that British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.US) announced on Wednesday that it is restructuring its partnership with German biotech company CureVac (CVAC.US) and will completely control and take over several vaccines jointly developed by the two companies. As of the release of this news, CureVac's pre-market stock rose 18.26%.
GlaxoSmithKline stated that it will buy all influenza and COVID-19 vaccine copyrights from CureVac and pay CureVac a prepayment of 400 million euros (approximately 429 million US dollars) as well as up to an additional 1.05 billion euros (approximately 1.13 billion US dollars) in product development, regulatory and sales stage, and tiered royalty costs. Under this encouraging news, CureVac's stock price jumped more than 23% during after-hours trading in the US stock market.
It is understood that the cooperation relationship between GlaxoSmithKline and biotech company CureVac began during the global COVID-19 epidemic in 2020. The two companies cooperated to develop infectious disease vaccines based on mRNA technology.
GlaxoSmithKline is one of the world's leading vaccine manufacturers. The agreement reached on Wednesday reflects that CEO Emma Walmsley's leadership of GlaxoSmithKline will focus on the vaccine and infectious disease control field as the company's main strategy to deal with the problem of patent expiration and the possible decline in current best-selling drug sales before and around 2030.
It is understood that CureVac is selling its main vaccine development projects, accepting GlaxoSmithKline's prepayments, and improving its basic cash flow status while focusing on new cancer treatment methods.
The company stated in April that it was undergoing workforce optimization because it was trying to overcome the difficulties encountered during the global COVID-19 epidemic period in developing COVID-19 vaccines based on mRNA technology.
GlaxoSmithKline is now making every effort to develop a flu vaccine and a new COVID-19 vaccine, both of which are in phase II clinical trials, and another bird flu vaccine is in phase I or early trials.
A spokesperson for GlaxoSmithKline stated that the licensing agreement announced on Wednesday will not affect GlaxoSmithKline's stake in CureVac, which currently holds a stake of approximately 130 million euros.