The European Investment Bank (EIB) has agreed a €75 million loan deal with biotech CureVac to support the large-scale production of vaccines. Which includes a candidate targeting COVID-19. The move is being facilitated through the Infectious Diseases Finance Facility of the EU’s research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020.
On today’s announcement, Ambroise Fayolle, EIB Vice-President in charge of innovation and health, said: “It does not need a pandemic to prove that new vaccines can be breakthroughs for public health. But in times like ours it becomes clear just how important they are to keep societies running globally. In fact, the only way to end the dramatic situation the world is facing since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic would be a safe and effective vaccine. Thanks to our cooperation with the European Commission, we can finance more and more innovative biotech and medtech companies, such as CureVac, in their research and development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics solutions. This is an added value of Europe, and the EIB does everything it can to maximise this value for the sake of people.”
The money will enable CureVac to complete its new production site in Tübingen, Germany, and its ‘ongoing development of vaccines against infectious diseases’.
Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, added: “The coronavirus will be with us, as long as we do not have a vaccine against it. This is why our work on this front, together with international actors, is so crucial. Recently we have presented our vaccines strategy to accelerate the development, manufacturing and deployment of vaccines against the novel coronavirus. And since the beginning of the pandemic, we increased the funding for the Infectious Diseases Finance Facility by €400 million to allow the EIB to process a higher volume of projects addressing this disease. With our support to CureVac we accelerate our efforts to find safe and effective solutions for everyone in Europe and globally.”
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