BioNTech and UK government partner to accelerate mRNA cancer immunotherapies

BioNTech has entered into a strategic partnership with the UK government to accelerate clinical trials for personalised mRNA immunotherapies, to provide up to 10,000 patients with this personalised type of treatment by the end of 2030.

The partners plan to utilise the UK’s clinical trial network, genomics and health data assets to accelerate trial site and patient recruitment to test the German biotech’s pipeline of personalised mRNA cancer immunotherapies and infectious disease vaccines.

The next steps of the collaboration will be the selection of candidates, trial sites and the set-up of a development plan, to begin enrolment in the second half of 2023.

To date, several hundred patients have been treated with mRNA-based cancer immunotherapies as part of BioNTech’s trials for product candidates from its FixVac and iNeST platforms.

Unlike chemotherapy, which works by attacking lots of different cells, mRNA treatment is tailor-made for the individual patient and presents the immune system with genetic code from the specific cancer so it can only attack the tumour.

BioNTech continues to evaluate various combinations of mRNA backbone and delivery technologies to identify efficient candidates with a favourable safety profile.

Professor Ugur Sahin, BioNTech’s chief executive officer and co-founder, said: “Our goal is to accelerate the development of immunotherapies and vaccines using technologies we have been researching for over 20 years.

“...If successful, this collaboration has the potential to improve outcomes for patients and provide early access to our suite of cancer immunotherapies as well as to innovative vaccines against infectious diseases – in the UK and worldwide.”

BioNTech said it plans to invest in a UK research and development hub in Cambridge that will employ more than 70 highly skilled scientists, the first of which will commence work towards the beginning of this year.

The company also said it will strengthen its UK footprint by setting up regional headquarters in London. As part of the collaboration, BioNTech will remain the local sponsor of current and upcoming new clinical trials of its programmes in the UK and will design the clinical trial protocols.

“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," Sahin said.