German Company Says Allowed To Start Trial Of COVID-19 Vaccine In Belgium, Germany

German Company Says Allowed to Start Trial of COVID-19 Vaccine in Belgium, Germany

German biopharmaceutical company CureVac on Wednesday announced that it had received permission to conduct the first stage of clinical trials for its vaccine against COVID-19 from the Belgian and German authorities

BERLIN (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th June, 2020) German biopharmaceutical company CureVac on Wednesday announced that it had received permission to conduct the first stage of clinical trials for its vaccine against COVID-19 from the Belgian and German authorities.

The company began developing the vaccine earlier in the year. The first phase is said to be conducted at the Institute for Tropical Medicine in Tuebingen and the Ghent University Hospital, the Tropical Institute of the University Hospital Munich, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Hannover Medical school.

"CureVac AG, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of transformative medicines based on optimized mRNA, today announced that the German Health Authority Paul-Ehrlich-Institute (PEI) and the Belgian Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products (FAMHP) have approved the Phase 1 clinical trial for its vaccine program to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection," the company said in a statement.

During the trial, 168 subjects aged between 18 to 60 will be given 2 to 8 micrograms of the vaccine in order to determine the optimal dose.

"We are encouraged that we received the green light from the regulatory authorities to start the clinical development of our COVID-19 candidate. During the last few months, our team has put a lot of effort into the preclinical validation of several vaccine candidates to select an optimal construct. We are confident that our early optimization work will provide a safe and effective low dose vaccine. In parallel, we are already producing large quantities of this trial medication under GMP conditions," acting CEO of CureVac Franz-Werner Haas said.

According to the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute, other COVID-19 vaccine trials are likely to begin in Germany within the next several months.