The German company behind the first ever approved COVID-19 vaccine is developing a jab to help fight cancer – which could be available in at least two years.
BioNTech was already working on a cancer-focused jab when COVID-19 infection began to spread around the world.
The coronavirus vaccine developed by the company and Pfizer was approved in the UK in the first 11 months of the pandemic – increasing the funds needed for BioNTech to continue its follow-up to the cancer vaccine.
His COVID vaccine uses mRNA, a messenger RNA, to carry instructions into the human body to make proteins that lead it to attack a virus – the same technology it will rely on for the immune system to fight tumors.
“We have several different mRNA-based cancer vaccines,” said Ozlem Tureci, who co-founded BioNTech with her husband Ugur Sahin.
Asked when such treatment might be available, Tureci said that “it is very difficult to predict in innovative development. But we expect that in just a few years, we will have (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 highest decorations in the country – the Order of Merit.
“You started with a drug to treat cancer in one person,” Steinmeier told the couple. “And today we have a vaccine for all mankind.”
Tureci said the award was “really an honor”, but said he could not do it without others.
“It’s about the effort of many: our BioNTech team, all the partners involved, also governments, regulators, who worked together with a sense of urgency,” Tureci said. “As we see it, this is a recognition of this effort and also a celebration of science.”
Wired Post