The German company responsible for the first approved COVID-19 vaccine is developing a vaccine to help fight cancer – which could be available in up to two years.
BioNTech was already working on a cancer-focused injection when the COVID-19 infection began to spread worldwide.
The coronavirus vaccine developed by the company and Pfizer was approved in Britain in the first 11 months of the pandemic – increasing the funds needed for BioNTech to continue to seek the cancer vaccine.
His vaccine COVID uses mRNA, a messenger RNA, to carry instructions to the human body for the production of proteins that prepare it to attack a virus – the same technology it will depend on to make the immune system fight tumors.
“We have several mRNA-based cancer vaccines,” said Ozlem Tureci, who founded BioNTech with her husband Ugur Sahin.
Asked when such treatment could be available, Tureci said, “This is very difficult to predict in innovative development. But we hope that within just a few years, we will also have our (against) cancer vaccines in a place where we can offer them to people ”.
On Friday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded the husband and wife team one of the country’s highest honors – the Order of Merit.
“You started with a drug to treat cancer in a single individual,” Steinmeier told the couple. “And today we have a vaccine for all of humanity.”
Tureci said the award was “really an honor”, but said he couldn’t do it without others.
“It is the effort of many: our team at BioNTech, all the partners involved, including governments, regulatory authorities, who have worked together with a sense of urgency,” said Tureci. “In our view, this is an acknowledgment of that effort and also a celebration of science.”
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