Why 99Designs has paid out $43 million Ingmar Hoerr, CEO of German biopharmaceutical company CureVac, on its research to develop vaccines for cancer and infectious diseases. While traditional flu vaccines trigger a response from the immune system, the new ones are based on messenger RNA, a genetic material that controls protein production. In this approach, the body's T-cells recognize and attack cells infected by all strains of flu virus, not just one, and can be produced in six weeks and stored at room temperature.