Bayer to Make CureVac Shot as Big Pharma Joins Vaccine Push

Bayer AG agreed to produceCureVac NV’s experimental coronavirus vaccine to boost the roll out of a promising shot as European governments scramble to secure additional supplies.

The move extends Bayer’s current pact with CureVac beyond simply helping with regulatory clearances and global distribution, but the production effort will only start at the end of the year. The announcement follows commitments from fellow European pharma giantsSanofi andNovartis AG to put their manufacturing capacities behind scaling up Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s Covid-19 injection.

Vaccines appear to offer the only way out of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 2.2 million people worldwide, and large drugmakers bring an ability to boost supply that smaller developers lack.European Union governments are pressing for corporate help as the bloc’s immunization effort lags and new variants threaten the efficacy of existing shots.

“We will need vaccines beyond the summer,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said at a press conference Monday. “It’s possible that due to mutations we cannot yet predict today, vaccines will have to be adjusted and changed. The mRNA technology makes it possible to do that relatively quickly.”

The tension over a lack of vaccine supply has sparked a high stakes power play in Brussels. The EU is taking onAstraZeneca Plc and other pharmaceutical companies, and imposing export controls in an all-or-nothing response to its perceived failings.

Bayer said it expects to be able to produce 160 million doses of the CureVac vaccine next year by harnessing its factory in Wuppertal, near Duesseldorf. It marks the first time the German company, whose products range from aspirin to pesticides, would manufacture a vaccine.

CureVac’s shot is still being tested in a late-stage trial, but Spahnhas said that the shot could gain approval as soon as March. The product is a messenger RNA vaccine similar to the ones from fellow German biotech BioNTech — which partnered with Pfizer — and Moderna Inc. Those shots were the first approved in Europe and elsewhere, and demonstrated about 95% effectiveness in trials.

Bayershares rose less than 1% in Frankfurt trading.

Chief Executive Officer Werner Baumann said lastmonth that the German drugs and chemicals maker had been “examining intensively” whether it could help make CureVac’s shot using its production network in Germany and the U.S.

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