Germany Boosts CureVac, BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Programs With New Grants

Germany’s government has granted $445 million to BioNTech and $297 million to CureVac to help the two German companies accelerate their COVID-19 vaccine development efforts.

The funding will go toward clinical development and the scaling up of manufacturing capacity for the companies’ messenger RNA (mRNA)-based vaccines.

The synthetic vaccines are designed to generate antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.  They offer some advantages over existing vaccine technology because they are easier to scale up. But the technology is new, and no mRNA vaccines are currently approved for human use.