Mainz-based pharmaceutical company Biontech has taken a major step towards bringing its mRNA-based cancer vaccines to market. Clinical trials in thousands of awake patients in Britain are due to start this year, SPIEGEL reported on Sunday. Vaccine candidates, cancer types and sites are being screened for this.
With its British partners, Biontech wants to ensure that the procedure soon becomes part of everyday care. “We believe this will be possible on a larger scale for patients before 2030,” CEO Ugur Sahin told the magazine.
Technology is very advanced. “In 2014, it took us three to six months to produce an individualized cancer vaccine; currently, it takes four to six weeks,” explained the company’s founder. “Our goal is to arrive in less than four weeks.” There is also promising evidence of efficacy, said Sahin’s wife, Özlem Türeci, co-founder and chief medical officer of Biontech. The company is currently researching several mRNA cancer vaccines. “For some of these candidates, we see evidence of clinical activity.” This means that the immune system is activated, “so that in some patients the cancer becomes noticeably smaller or disappears and relapses occur less often.”