Vaccines based on CureVac's RNActive technology demonstrate immunogenicity and protection against influenza

German clinical-stage biopharma company CureVac GmbH and the German Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute (FLI) have announced that mRNA vaccines (RNActive) based on the company's RNA technology platform have the potential to provide effective protection against infectious diseases.

In vivo data published by CureVac and the FLI on-line in Nature Biotechnology show that mRNA vaccines induced balanced, long-lived and protective immunity to influenza A virus infections in various animal models. It is also shown that the production of RNActive vaccines is highly flexible. Thus, RNActive vaccines can be rapidly supplied for a variety of virus strains and subtypes identified in response to pandemic scenarios.

"The findings and results from a very fruitful collaboration with our colleagues from the renowned Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute, underscore the medical potential of mRNA beyond cancer immunotherapy and validate the capacity of our RNActive vaccines to prevent infectious diseases," said Ingmar Hoerr, chief executive of CureVac. "The synthetic nature of our RNActive vaccines reduces production time dramatically and allows for sequence-matched vaccines that can be produced quickly and reliably in a scalable process. Additionally, our vaccines can be stored at room temperature, thereby avoiding the cold-chain in contrast to all other vaccines on the market and making worldwide distribution of our vaccines logistically and financially attractive," he added.