Tesla to make molecule printers for Covid-19 vaccine in Germany
Tesla is building mobile molecule printers to help make a potential Covid-19 vaccine being developed by CureVac in Germany.
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Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Wednesday that his company would work with CureVac which is developing portable, automated mRNA production units that it calls printers, and which Musk described as “RNA microfactories”.
The “microfactories” would be built at Tesla Grohmann Automation in Germany, Musk said on Wednesday night.
They are being designed for shipment to remote locations, reported Reuters on Thursday.
But for the immediate use during the pandemic it has production sites with regulatory approval in Germany with a capacity to produce hundreds of millions of doses.
The company is a pioneer of the so-called messenger RNA approach, which is also pursued by BioNTech and its partner Pfizer as well as Moderna.
RNA molecules are single-stranded versions of the DNA double-helix and can be produced in a relatively simple biochemical process.