The Tübingen biotech company CureVac is giving up its first corona vaccine candidate.
The company announced on Tuesday that it would now focus on the second-generation corona vaccine in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.
Clinical trials should begin here in the next few months.
The pandemic is developing into an endemic, which will change public health needs, said CureVac boss Franz-Werner Haas.
The first generation CVnCoV, on the other hand, will be withdrawn from the ongoing approval process, it said.
This also ends the preliminary contract with the European Commission.
CureVac is examining the extent to which the commitments made in this context could also be transferred to the vaccine candidates of the second generation.
Effectiveness of 48 percent
As the company announced, it was assumed that EMA approval would not have been granted until the second quarter of 2022 at the earliest.
There was no formal application for approval for the vaccine candidate CVnCoV, CVnCoV was still in the so-called rolling procedure for approval.
In late June, CureVac announced that its first-generation vaccine candidate was less effective than some other vaccines.
At the beginning of July, the Tübingen biotech company assumed that the EMA would approve the vaccine despite its low effectiveness.
According to a final analysis, the CureVac preparation had shown an effectiveness of 48 percent against Covid 19 disease across all age groups.
This makes it significantly less effective overall than other vaccines.
The decision was not well received by the stock market.
The shares fell by almost 15 percent.