UPDATE: Please continue reading here! Denial: “CureVac has not received an offer from the US government”
“America first” was probably what US President Donald Trump thought when he made his offer, but it was rejected.
The Tübingen company “ CureVac ” is just one of many institutions that are feverishly working on a vaccine against the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. It now came into focus because the company turned down an offer from Trump, which was certainly financially interesting.
Research for a vaccine
In January 2020 it was announced that CureVac would receive up to $8.3 million from the international vaccine initiative CEPI, as SWR learned .
Reason for this: The biotechnology company is working on a method to be able to develop future vaccines more quickly than before, which will probably lead to a faster development of a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2.
However, there is currently no drug that has been fully developed and approved using this new method.
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Dietmar Hopp refused
Fortunately, you can say that the German billionaire Dietmar Hopp has an 80 percent stake in CureVac, so you can reject what is probably a very attractive offer from Donald Trump.
Manager-Magazin , SWR , ZDF and ntv among others , the USA has tried to obtain exclusive rights for a future SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. This was preceded by discussions between CureVac and the USA at the beginning of March . However, the offer was rejected by Hopp.
“If we hopefully soon manage to develop an effective vaccine against the corona virus, it should be able to reach, protect and help people not only regionally but in solidarity all over the world.”
said Dietmar Hopp on Sunday evening.
One can now puzzle over what exactly was said during these discussions at the beginning of March, but what was strange was that the previous CEO, Daniel Menichella, left CureVac shortly afterwards and was replaced .
According to information from “Welt am Sonntag”, Trump is said to have tried to secure the rights to a future vaccine exclusively for the USA:
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Of course, a lot of money plays a big role with a vaccine like this: whoever has the exclusive rights can make enormous money from it. However, a vaccine must first be developed, so it would be a pretty risky poker game if Trump only relied on CureVac.
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The U.S. government has spoken to more than 25 companies that could potentially help develop a vaccine, a U.S. official said , and of course a vaccine will then be made available to the world.
On Monday, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said about the US government's alleged attempt to persuade CureVac to relocate:
“German researchers are at the forefront of developing medicines and vaccines in global collaborations. We cannot allow others to seek exclusive appropriation of their research results.”
UPDATE: Please continue reading here! Denial: “CureVac has not received an offer from the US government”
Article image: REDPIXEL.PL / Shutterstock
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