4 ms·

So Trump didn't need to try to buy a German biotech company to produce a vaccine "for the US only"? https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/president-trump-tries

So Trump didn't need to try to buy a German biotech company to produce a vaccine "for the US only"? https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/president-trump-tries-to-lure-curevac-to-make-a-u-s-vaccine-but-german-government-steps https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/president-trump-tries-...

Slartie 7y ago
As far as I understand it, both companies use the same basic approach and are roughly comparable. But the issue, as soon as a valid working vaccine is found, will be production capacity: you cannot produce vaccine for 330mil people overnight; none of these companies can do that by itself. Hence securing eventually-needed production capacity has its value, especially if you need the vaccine to be broadly available before a certain election date happens, because otherwise you die a political death.
- JanSt 7y ago
  CureVacs vaccine can be produced in HUGE doses almost immediatly. Their rabies vaccine CV7202 requires only two doses of 1 µg mRNA, and they hope to replicate that with the corona-virus. If corona needs approx. the same doses they claim to be able to produce billions of them soon. https://www.curevac.com/de/news/curevac-focuses-on-the-development-of-mrna-based-coronavirus-vaccine-to-protect-people-worldwide https://www.curevac.com/de/news/curevac-focuses-on-the-devel...
  - Slartie 7y ago
    What they don't say there is how long it takes to scale up and produce those "billions" of doses. I found documented claims of 10 million doses until this summer (https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/rna-vaccines-are-coronavirus-frontrunners/4011326.article#/ https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/rna-vaccines-are-coronav...) with the existing production capacities.
    - DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
      I don't think CureVac's technology is the right choice, though we should fund everyone at the same time to scale-up at risk IMHO. Moderna and BioNTech could scale-up to hundreds of millions of doses by EOY without expanding capacity. If the US and German governmetns really hit the gas, we could expand both companies manufacturing at risk and get to hundreds of millions doses in 6 months. Then, if the clinical trials look good, we already have the material ready to go.
      - Slartie 7y ago
        That is probably the best approach: start manufacturing at scale as soon as the risk profile of a vaccine candidate offers a minimum of confidence for it to be working. And doing that with as many companies in the field as possible in parallel to increase probabilities of success. As a retail investor living in Germany, this confirms my decision to put a little bit of money into Moderna stock. I would have done the same with CureVac, but they aren't listed at any stock exchange unfortunately.
        DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
        BioNTech is also public (BNTX), so you should add some there too. But maybe wait for them to come back to Earth (up ~50% premarket from announcements!)
        Slartie 7y ago
        Thanks for the tip, will keep an eye on them. Though I wonder why they shot up 50-60% while Moderna keeps trading normally. It does appear from the outside as if both of them were comparable from a liquidity standpoint and also with regard to their progress towards a working vaccine.
        DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
        They announced a collaboration with a Chinese company to start trials in April. So that news is the catalyst for the move. I am surprised Moderna isn't moving higher on news that they actually dosed, you know, a real live person. shrug the market seems to enjoy hating on Moderna. Oh well, they raised $500mil in January and are sitting on $1.9b so it doesnt' really matter what the stock does in the near/mid term.
  - DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
    I am skeptical of their 1mcg claim. The only way to get to 1mcg for an mRNA-based vaccine is through even newer and untested technology: self-amplifying mRNA, some undisclosed delivery technology/chemistry, or some undisclosed improvement to their adjuvanting technology. In general, they have been far behind Moderna and BioNTech for years, so I'm not sure we should be hitching our wagon to them. This is their most recent clinical trial results (2017) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)31665-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... showing basically failure without more-immunogenic delivery. This is their most recent clinical publication showing their adjuvanting technology (2019) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X19302191 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X1... which in general is needed to make-up for their lack of potency in their mRNA vaccine technology. A problem neither BioNTech nor Moderna have with their mRNA and delivery technology.
- _sgff 7y ago
  Compared to Moderna and BioNTech, CureVac uses an older nucleotide chemistry, an older delivery technology, and a riskier adjuvanting idea. Both Moderna and BioNTech have GMP production capacity and process know-how to get this done in short-order. CureVac is a distant third place overall.
- sp332 7y ago
  But this company does research and development work. Getting exclusivity from them would not affect production capacity.
crocodiletears 7y ago
> The Welt am Sonntag story spoke to an anonymous German government source as saying Trump was trying to essentially buy the work from the scientists for a vaccine, “but only for the United States.” Bareknuckle and self-interested as Trump's foreign policy may be at times, I have a hard time believing he'd go so far as to deny the world a vaccine for this, though I do see the sense in attempting to acquire promising research teams in order to avoid the overhead of multi-organizational collaboration. If the last four years have taught me much, it's that anonymous government officials say a lot of things. I can't read German, does the original article do anything to validate this claim?
- JanSt 7y ago
  The german ministry of health confirmed[1] the newspaper report. If this is true it's a major turning point in the trans-atlantic partnership. [1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/so-agiert-trump-beim-coronavirus-usa-wollen-deutsche-impfstoff-forscher-anlocken/25645578.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/so-agiert-trump-beim-coro...
  - InTheArena 7y ago
    Unless there is a new set of information out there, there has been no confirmation on the exclusivity as part of the negotiation, only the outlandish statements of a socialist politician who is pushing for a top to bottom overhaul of the German health care system. The same sources have been getting a lot of the basic facts wrong (such as the company already being partly owned by the bill and melinda gates foundation, and a large portion of their research happening in Boston). I suspect that this is the same xenophobia that is resulting in the same rumors floating around the US that China has a vaccine that they are denying the rest of the world. Regardless, it might make sense to wait a bit for facts to come out.
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      In this case do you mean the world's xenophobia of the states? I find it hard to believe that this message somehow stokes the United States to xenophobic sentiment.

Slartie 7y ago

As far as I understand it, both companies use the same basic approach and are roughly comparable. But the issue, as soon as a valid working vaccine is found, will be production capacity: you cannot produce vaccine for 330mil people overnight; none of these companies can do that by itself. Hence securing eventually-needed production capacity has its value, especially if you need the vaccine to be broadly available before a certain election date happens, because otherwise you die a political death.

JanSt 7y ago
CureVacs vaccine can be produced in HUGE doses almost immediatly. Their rabies vaccine CV7202 requires only two doses of 1 µg mRNA, and they hope to replicate that with the corona-virus. If corona needs approx. the same doses they claim to be able to produce billions of them soon. https://www.curevac.com/de/news/curevac-focuses-on-the-development-of-mrna-based-coronavirus-vaccine-to-protect-people-worldwide https://www.curevac.com/de/news/curevac-focuses-on-the-devel...
- Slartie 7y ago
  What they don't say there is how long it takes to scale up and produce those "billions" of doses. I found documented claims of 10 million doses until this summer (https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/rna-vaccines-are-coronavirus-frontrunners/4011326.article#/ https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/rna-vaccines-are-coronav...) with the existing production capacities.
  - DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
    I don't think CureVac's technology is the right choice, though we should fund everyone at the same time to scale-up at risk IMHO. Moderna and BioNTech could scale-up to hundreds of millions of doses by EOY without expanding capacity. If the US and German governmetns really hit the gas, we could expand both companies manufacturing at risk and get to hundreds of millions doses in 6 months. Then, if the clinical trials look good, we already have the material ready to go.
    - Slartie 7y ago
      That is probably the best approach: start manufacturing at scale as soon as the risk profile of a vaccine candidate offers a minimum of confidence for it to be working. And doing that with as many companies in the field as possible in parallel to increase probabilities of success. As a retail investor living in Germany, this confirms my decision to put a little bit of money into Moderna stock. I would have done the same with CureVac, but they aren't listed at any stock exchange unfortunately.
      - DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
        BioNTech is also public (BNTX), so you should add some there too. But maybe wait for them to come back to Earth (up ~50% premarket from announcements!)
        Slartie 7y ago
        Thanks for the tip, will keep an eye on them. Though I wonder why they shot up 50-60% while Moderna keeps trading normally. It does appear from the outside as if both of them were comparable from a liquidity standpoint and also with regard to their progress towards a working vaccine.
        DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
        They announced a collaboration with a Chinese company to start trials in April. So that news is the catalyst for the move. I am surprised Moderna isn't moving higher on news that they actually dosed, you know, a real live person. shrug the market seems to enjoy hating on Moderna. Oh well, they raised $500mil in January and are sitting on $1.9b so it doesnt' really matter what the stock does in the near/mid term.
- DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
  I am skeptical of their 1mcg claim. The only way to get to 1mcg for an mRNA-based vaccine is through even newer and untested technology: self-amplifying mRNA, some undisclosed delivery technology/chemistry, or some undisclosed improvement to their adjuvanting technology. In general, they have been far behind Moderna and BioNTech for years, so I'm not sure we should be hitching our wagon to them. This is their most recent clinical trial results (2017) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)31665-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... showing basically failure without more-immunogenic delivery. This is their most recent clinical publication showing their adjuvanting technology (2019) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X19302191 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X1... which in general is needed to make-up for their lack of potency in their mRNA vaccine technology. A problem neither BioNTech nor Moderna have with their mRNA and delivery technology.
_sgff 7y ago
Compared to Moderna and BioNTech, CureVac uses an older nucleotide chemistry, an older delivery technology, and a riskier adjuvanting idea. Both Moderna and BioNTech have GMP production capacity and process know-how to get this done in short-order. CureVac is a distant third place overall.
sp332 7y ago
But this company does research and development work. Getting exclusivity from them would not affect production capacity.

crocodiletears 7y ago

> The Welt am Sonntag story spoke to an anonymous German government source as saying Trump was trying to essentially buy the work from the scientists for a vaccine, “but only for the United States.” Bareknuckle and self-interested as Trump's foreign policy may be at times, I have a hard time believing he'd go so far as to deny the world a vaccine for this, though I do see the sense in attempting to acquire promising research teams in order to avoid the overhead of multi-organizational collaboration. If the last four years have taught me much, it's that anonymous government officials say a lot of things. I can't read German, does the original article do anything to validate this claim?

JanSt 7y ago
The german ministry of health confirmed[1] the newspaper report. If this is true it's a major turning point in the trans-atlantic partnership. [1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/so-agiert-trump-beim-coronavirus-usa-wollen-deutsche-impfstoff-forscher-anlocken/25645578.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/so-agiert-trump-beim-coro...
- InTheArena 7y ago
  Unless there is a new set of information out there, there has been no confirmation on the exclusivity as part of the negotiation, only the outlandish statements of a socialist politician who is pushing for a top to bottom overhaul of the German health care system. The same sources have been getting a lot of the basic facts wrong (such as the company already being partly owned by the bill and melinda gates foundation, and a large portion of their research happening in Boston). I suspect that this is the same xenophobia that is resulting in the same rumors floating around the US that China has a vaccine that they are denying the rest of the world. Regardless, it might make sense to wait a bit for facts to come out.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    In this case do you mean the world's xenophobia of the states? I find it hard to believe that this message somehow stokes the United States to xenophobic sentiment.