When the coronavirus pandemic struck, CureVac was supposed to be the first to bring a revolutionary vaccine technology to market. Instead, the German biotech was left in the dust.
Now executives, investors and industry watchers are struggling to understand what went wrong — and whether the company must change its approach to the messenger ribonucleic acid technology it was so critical to advancing.
CureVac’s troubles started not long after coronavirus began to spread. First, a brain haemorrhage forced founder Ingmar Hoerr — whose 2000 doctoral thesis has informed the development of all mRNA shots — to step aside in March 2020, just five days after he had moved from the supervisory board to be chief executive.