CureVac Enrolls First Participant in COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate Trial

CureVac, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Germany, announced on Dec. 14, 2020 that it has enrolled its first participant in its Phase IIb/III study of its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate, CVnCoV.

The HERALD trial will involve participants 18 years and older who will receive a two-dose schedule of CVnCoV or placebo at multiple sites is Europe and Latin America, CureVac said in a company press release. The trial will assess the efficacy of the vaccine in avoiding first episodes of confirmed cases of COVID-19 of any severity, as well as preventing moderate to severe confirmed cases of COVID-19 in participants who have never been infected with the disease.

“With the start of the pivotal Phase IIb/III study, we have reached another important milestone in the development of our vaccine candidate, CVnCoV,” said Dr. Franz-Werner Haas, CEO of CureVac, in the press release. “The clinical safety and immunogenicity data achieved to date look promising and we are hopeful that this trial will continue to demonstrate the impact of mRNA technology and our vaccine to prevent COVID-19, and to help defeat this pandemic.”