The European Investment Bank (EIB) and CureVac, abiopharmaceutical company developing innovative medicines based on optimised messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), entered into a €75 million loan agreement to support the company’s ongoing development of vaccines against infectious diseases, including its vaccine candidate aimed at preventing coronavirus infections. In addition, the loan will support CureVac’s efforts to expand its manufacturing capabilities and accelerate the completion of its fourth production site in Tübingen, Germany. It is financed under the Infectious Diseases Finance Facility (IDFF) of Horizon 2020, the EU research and innovation programme.

Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said: “The coronavirus will be with us, as long as we do not have a vaccine against it. This is why our work on this front, together with international actors, is so crucial. Recently we have presented our vaccines strategy to accelerate the development, manufacturing and deployment of vaccines against the novel coronavirus. And since the beginning of the pandemic, we increased the funding for the Infectious Diseases Finance Facility by €400 million to allow the EIB to process a higher volume of projects addressing this disease. With our support to CureVac we accelerate our efforts to find safe and effective solutions for everyone in Europe and globally.”

The Infectious Diseases Finance Facility, which comes under Horizon 2020, is an example of successful collaboration between the Commission and the EIB in the face of a health crisis. Through the IDFF, the EIB has supported 13 companies with total lending of €316 million for developing cures, vaccines and diagnostics against various infectious diseases, most prominently the coronavirus.

(For more information: Johannes Bahrke – Tel.: +32 229 58615; Marietta Grammenou – Tel.: +32 229 83583)