The European Investment Bank (EIB) has granted the German laboratory BioNTech debt financing of up to € 100 million for the development and production of a vaccine against the new coronavirus, announced Thursday the European Commission.
The funding is intended to support the German company's BNT162 vaccine program against COVID-19, according to the agreement between the two parties.
The deal will also allow the company to "build production capacity to rapidly deliver the vaccine worldwide in response to the pandemic," said a statement from the European Commission.
BioNTech was the first European company to launch clinical trials, after a first series in Germany in April and another in the United States in early May, recalls the European executive, adding that the development program BioNTech's BNT162 is one of the largest development programs in the world, with four vaccine candidates tested in parallel.
The EIB debt instrument will be disbursed in two tranches of EUR 50 million each, after completion of predefined milestones. It benefits from the support of the European Fund for Strategic Investments, the financial heart of the Plan
for Europe, in which the EIB and the European Commission are teaming up to make priority investments in the EU.
It is also based on the InnovFin Risk Sharing Mechanism which targets business research initiatives supported by Horizon 2020, the EU's framework program for research and innovation.
0 Comments