BioNTech sees UK trials on cancer vaccines starting this year

Clinical trials for BioNTech's cancer vaccines are expected to begin this year in the United Kingdom, marking an important step towards their possible sale on the open market, according to the German company's top executive, Ugur Sahin, in the magazine Der Spiegel. BioNTech, known for its COVID vaccine developed with US partner Pfizer, is currently deciding which types of cancer to test its personalised cancer immunotherapies on and where to conduct the trials, according to Sahin.

The company hopes that these therapies, which are based on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology similar to that used in its COVID-19 vaccine, will soon become standard treatment for cancer patients. "We believe that for a large number of patients, this should be possible before 2030," Sahin said. He claims that technology for this type of therapy has advanced significantly. "In 2014, it took 3-6 months to develop an individualised cancer vaccine; now, it takes 4-6 weeks. Our goal is to complete it in less than four weeks."