Boehringer Ingelheim and CureVac to develop lung cancer therapy

Boehringer Ingelheim has announced an exclusive global license and development collaboration with CureVac that will involve the creation of a new lung cancer therapy.

The deal will give Boehringer Ingelheim exclusive global rights for the development and commercialisation of CureVac's investigational therapeutic cancer vaccine CV9202, which is currently in early clinical development for the treatment of lung cancer.

Following this announcement, Boehringer Ingelheim will start clinical investigation of CV9202 in combination with afatinib in patients with advanced or metastatic EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as well as in combination with chemoradiation therapy in patients with unresectable stage III NSCLC.

CV9202 is based on CureVac's mRNA technology, which combats cancer by prompting the patient's own immune system to fight the tumour with a specific immune response.

Professor Klaus Dugi, chief medical officer at Boehringer Ingelheim, said: "We are proud of our commitment to help improve the treatment of cancers with a high medical need. In our collaboration with CureVac, we will investigate combining existing treatments with the approach of sustained activation of the immune system."

This comes after the firm received EU approval earlier this month for a new insulin glargine therapy for diabetes that was developed in collaboration with Lilly.