Elasomeran

A midstage study found that Curevo\'s candidate elicited a 100% vaccine response rate compared to 97.9% for GSK\'s Shingrix. \n In its effort to rival GSK’s shingles vaccine Shingrix, Curevo Vaccine has circled up $110 million and recruited two former GSK leaders to its board.The biotech’s series B was led by new investor Medicxi, a European biotech VC with vaccine companies such as Vaxcyte and ViceBio already in its portfolio, according to a March 17 release. Other new Curevo backers include OrbiMed, Sanofi Ventures and HBM Healthcare Investments.Existing investors RA Capital Management, Janus Henderson Investors and Adjuvant Capital participated in the round, along with founding investor GC Biopharma.The Seattle-based biotech will inject the money into a phase 2 extension program for amezosvatein, a non-mRNA adjuvanted sub-unit vaccine designed to prevent shingles. The extension builds off midstage results that found the candidate elicited a 100% vaccine response rate compared to 97.9% for GSK\'s Shingrix, along with being linked to lower rates of solicited local and systemic adverse events. The extended program will include 640 more participants in efforts to finalize dose selection for phase 3.The extension trial is slated to launch in mid-2025, Curevo CEO George Simeon said in the release.The small biotech plans to go head-to-head with Shingrix with an assist from some former GSK execs, one being Operation Warp Speed’s chief scientific advisor Moncef Slaoui, Ph.D. Before advising the federal government during the COVID-19 pandemic, Slaoui served as vaccine head at GSK and contributed to the creation of several new vaccines—including Shingrix—during his almost 30 years with the Big Pharma. Now, he’ll serve as chair of Curevo’s board of directors.“I have been collaborating with the Curevo team for several weeks now,” Slaoui said in a company statement. “I’m very excited to work with them to help perfect shingles vaccination, adding good tolerability to the exceptional efficacy achieved by the current vaccine. The data so far show Curevo’s adjuvant technology has the attributes to succeed in this endeavor.”The vaccine biotech has also landed Tal Zaks, M.D., Ph.D., to serve on its board on behalf of OrbiMed. Zaks served as Moderna’s chief medical officer for more than six years, overseeing the development of the company\'s mRNA vaccine Spikevax against COVID-19 during part of that time. Before that, he had held senior drug development roles at GSK and Sanofi.     Curevo’s mission is to develop varicella zoster virus (VZV) vaccines that boost tolerability and efficacy, with amezosvatein also being tested in an early-stage chickenpox study for children.The series B financing nearly doubles Curevo’s $60 million series A raised in August 2022 and it still tops the round after $26 million was tacked on in November of the same year.