BioNTech announces it will begin cancer vaccine trials in the UK from September

LONDON — The British government announced on Friday a partnership with a German company BioNTech to test potential vaccines for cancer and other diseases, as campaigners have warned that any breakthrough must remain affordable and accessible.

Cancer patients in England will have early access to trials involving personalized mRNA therapies, including cancer vaccines, which aim to trick the immune system into attacking harmful cells.

They will be given to patients at an early and late stage and will both target active cancer cells and prevent them from coming back.

BioNTech will set up new research and development centers in the UK, with a laboratory in Cambridge and headquarters in London, and will aim to deliver 10,000 therapies to patients from September 2023 until the end of the decade.

The company has developed one of the most widely distributed Covid-19 vaccines alongside a US pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Its CEO, Ugur Sahin, said he had learned lessons from the coronavirus pandemic about collaboration between the British National Health Service, academics, regulators and the private sector in drug development that he was now applying.

“Our goal is to accelerate the development of immunotherapies and vaccines using technologies that we have studied for more than 20 years,” he said in a statement. “The collaboration will cover various types of cancer and infectious diseases collectively affecting hundreds of millions of people around the world.”

Peter Johnson, UK national clinical director for cancer, said mRNA technology has the potential to transform approaches to a number of diseases.

The government confirmed to CNBC that the announcement represented a private investment in the UK, but would be supported by a new cancer vaccine launch platform funded by the NHS.

Other mRNA cancer vaccines, including collaboration between US companies Modern and Merckare also on trial.

Tim Bierley, an activist with UK group Global Justice Now, said big pharma had “an appalling record of price gouging on new drugs, even when public money has played a key role in bringing them to market”. .

“The government has a moral duty to push BioNtech to price this potentially life-saving vaccine so that it is available to everyone,” he said.

Mohga Kamal-Yanni, co-policy chief of the People’s Vaccine Alliance – a global group of health organisations, economists and activists – said news of the trial was good, but any outcome “belongs to the people. because of the amount of public funding involved.

“The UK government must say how it will ensure that any new medicine, vaccine or technology will be available and affordable to developing countries,” Kamal-Yanni said.

A government spokesperson told CNBC the research was at too early a stage to discuss pricing and distribution, but pointed to its track record in distributing free Covid-19 vaccines.