Sanofi Pasteur and CureVac collaborate on a $33.1 million project on vaccines for infectious diseases

Germany’s CureVac says it has signed several agreements with Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of French drug major Sanofi (Euronext: SAN) under which the companies will further develop and apply CureVac’s proprietary RNActive technology platform to the development of vaccines against several infectious diseases.

A research proposal with total funding of $33.1 million involving a collaboration among CureVac, Sanofi Pasteur (including Sanofi Pasteur VaxDesign Corp) and In-Cell-Art, a French biotech company contributing its nanoparticle technology, has been selected by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (an agency of the US Department of Defense). In this four-year project, CureVac and the other parties to the collaboration will further advance key aspects of CureVac’s RNActive technology platform and will evaluate several vaccine candidates in a number of relevant disease models.

Option agreement for several pre-defined pathogens

Parallel to the collaboration agreements, CureVac and Sanofi Pasteur have also signed an option agreement with pre-agreed license terms for several pre-defined pathogens. Sanofi Pasteur’s option rights are linked to fulfillment of certain agreed acceptance criteria relating to the DARPA project. CureVac retains the rights to its own core development programs and to all of its background technology for any other pathogens outside those within the Sanofi Pasteur option.