The German company behind the first COVID-19 vaccine approved in history is developing a spike to help fight cancer, which may be available in two years.
BioNTech was already working on a cancer-focused puncture when COVID-19 infection began to spread around the world.
The coronavirus vaccine developed by the company and Pfizer was approved in Britain during the first 11 months of the pandemic, which increased the funds needed for BioNTech to continue its cancer vaccine.
His COVID vaccine uses mRNA, a messenger RNA, to carry instructions to the human body to make proteins that prepare it to attack a virus, the same technology it will rely on to get the immune system to fight tumors.
“We have several mRNA-based cancer vaccines,” said Ozlem Tureci, who founded BioNTech with her husband Ugur Sahin.
Asked when this treatment might be available, Tureci said that “this is very difficult to predict in an innovative development. But we hope that in a couple of years we will also have our (cancer) cancer vaccines in a place where we can offer them to people ”.
On Friday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded the team of husbands and wives one of the highest decorations in the country: the Order of Merit.
“It 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 “in fact an honor,” but said he could not do it without others.
“This is 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, it’s a recognition of that effort and also a celebration of science.”
With publishing cables