Cancer Vaccine coming from BioNTech and UK

By Dana Malcolm 

Staff Writer

#UnitedKingdom, January 11, 2023 – The UK government is partnering with German COVID-19 vaccine maker BioNTech to create   a vaccine for cancer.  The news of the collaboration which will span several years broke on Thursday January 5th, announced by BioNTech in a press release .  The collaboration will focus not just on cancer vaccines but  infectious disease vaccines, and the expansion of BioNTech’s footprint in the UK.

The company is aggressively moving toward the clinical trial stage for their vaccines with the possibility of humans being injected by late this year.  BioNTech is aiming to provide ‘personalized cancer therapies’ for up to 10,000 people by the end of the decade.

For the UKs part they will provide the company with recruits for the clinical trials from its extensive clinical trial network,

The new cancer vaccine will be engineered using the mRNA technologies created in its COVID-19 vaccine with partner Pfizer as well as tech that has been in production for over two decades.  In reference to the swift creation and dissemination of the COVID-19 vaccine Ugur Sahin, CEO and Co-Founder of BioNTech said.

“This agreement is a result of the lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic as we all experience that drug development can be accelerated without cutting corners if everyone works seamlessly together towards the same goal.  Today’s agreement shows that we are committed to do the same for cancer patients.”

About 10 million lives are lost to cancer globally per year, BioNTech is promising that a successful program would mean improved outcomes for patients and early access to their suite of cancer immunotherapies.