RE: Todays news6 Jan 2023 10:54
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UK government is partnering with German Covid-19 vaccine maker BioNTech to enrol up to 10,000 patients in clinical trials for cutting-edge cancer treatments.
BioNTech, which partnered with US pharmaceutical group Pfizer to develop a Covid jab that was the world’s bestselling by revenue, said on Friday that it would open a research and development centre with 75 staff in Cambridge.
It added that it would open an office in London at the same time, and may later consider investing in manufacturing in the UK.
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https://www.ft.com/content/a0f74126-755d-487c-b65c-51d21124fec0
The company is developing personalised cancer vaccines, which it hopes will harness patients’ immune systems to tackle their tumours. The so-called vaccines are tailored to an individual tumour’s genetic code.
Ugur Sahin, BioNTech’s co-founder and chief executive, said the investment to meet the pledge of enrolling 10,000 patients by 2030 would be “huge” but that he could not yet put an exact number on it.
Steve Barclay, the health secretary, said UK patients could possibly participate in the trial from as early as September.
“This agreement builds on this government’s promise to increase research and development spending to £20bn per year,” he said, adding that it “demonstrates the UK remains one of the most attractive places in the world for innovative companies to invest in research”.
The UK last year signed a £1bn deal with Moderna, another Covid vaccine maker, to establish the first manufacturing centre for shots using messengerRNA, which teaches the immune system to recognise pathogens through a genetic code.
Özlem Türeci, BioNTech’s co-founder and chief medical officer, said the UK was an “obvious” choice for the clinical trials because of its “exceptionally agile” regulator, the NHS’s ability to recruit participants and its expertise in genomics.