mRNA technology: Biontech wants to be able to produce cancer vaccines in two years

The corona epidemic still has Germany firmly under control.

But the two scientists and entrepreneurs who, with their company Biontech, have developed a vaccine against the infectious disease in record time and manufactured it billions of times, are already thinking two steps ahead.

On Wednesday Ugur Sahin and his wife Özlem Türeci, the CEO and head of science at Biontech, celebrated the topping-out ceremony for a new production facility in Mainz, together with the Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer (SPD).

Sebastian Balzter

Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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However, more doses of the corona vaccine should not be produced there.

Rather, it is about the idea with which Sahin and Türeci founded their company almost 15 years ago, but which has not yet become a marketable product: individually tailored immunotherapies for cancer patients.

This is based on the knowledge that, depending on the genetic prerequisites, cancer progresses differently from patient to patient, from tumor to tumor, and therefore different drug therapies promise success.

"We are driven by the dream of translating our science into patient survival," said Türeci.

Prime Minister Dreyer mentioned that she had heard of Türeci's and Sahin's plans twenty years ago, when she was still the Health Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate.

“It was a risk.

Back then you were before your time, you are now, as is so often the case. "

"First system of its kind worldwide"

From 2023 onwards, 500 Biontech employees in the new three-story building in Mainz will produce around 10,000 such drugs per year; From taking blood and tumor samples from the patient to administering the respective medication, which, like the corona vaccine from Biontech, will be based on the so-called mRNA technology to activate the body's own defenses, it should only take six weeks - in the pharmaceutical industry a revolutionary short period.

Sahin described the factory as “the first system of its kind in the world”, of which the shell is now standing. Biontech is currently testing a number of cancer vaccines of the new type on patients; the most advanced are substances for the treatment of colon cancer and black skin cancer. It has not yet been determined whether they will one day be approved or not. "If we are successful with it, we want to be able to produce it on the first day after approval," announced Sahin.

The fact that Biontech can afford the risky investment is due to the phenomenal success of the corona vaccine developed and sold together with the American company Pfizer. For the current year, the management plans with income of up to 17 billion euros from the sale of the vaccine; By the end of September alone, a net profit of around 7 billion euros was posted. Biontech has not yet had any other commercially marketable products. The company, whose majority owners have been the twin brothers Thomas and Andreas Strüngmann, who became rich through the establishment and later sale of the pharmaceutical company Hexal, is currently valued at almost 78 billion euros on the New York Stock Exchange.

Sahin had recently spurred the share price by saying that Biontech's corona vaccine will probably also work against the new Omikron variant of the virus, in his opinion. In addition, he referred to the "Wall Street Journal" on the effectiveness against the variants that have occurred so far and on the double protective mechanism of the vaccination, which stimulates the body not only to produce antibodies, but also to build up T cells, which prevents serious disease progression Sagittarius. If changes to the vaccine should be necessary, they could be made within a few weeks, said Sahin. Nobody should lose their nerve because of Omikron, rather it is a matter of giving everyone booster vaccinations as quickly as possible.

The CEO of the American manufacturer Moderna, which also produces an mRNA vaccine against corona, was previously more skeptical.

The Omikron variant contains so many mutations, said Moderna boss Stephane Bancel, that modifications are likely necessary to maintain the protective effect.