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Clinical trials for BioNTech's cancer vaccines should start this year in Britain, marking an important step towards their possible sale on the open market, the German company's top executive Ugur Sahin told magazine Der Spiegel. BioNTech, known for its COVID vaccine with U.S. partner Pfizer, is currently deciding which types of cancer it wants to test its personalized cancer immunotherapies on and the locations where it will conduct the trials, Sahin said. The company wants these therapies, which are based on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology similar to the one that underpins its COVID-19 vaccine, to soon become a regular treatment for cancer patients. "We believe that this should be possible for large amounts of patients before 2030," Sahin said.

Thousands of cancer patients in England are set to gain fast-tracked access to personalised cancer vaccine trials through a new National Health Service(NHS) initiative, the Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad. This groundbreaking service aims to find new life-saving treatments by matching eligible patients with clinical trials across the country. The first patient to receive a personalised vaccine for bowel cancer is Elliot Phebve, a 55-year-old lecturer, treated at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. Phebve, diagnosed through a routine health check, underwent surgery and chemotherapy before joining the trial. Sponsored by German biotech company BioNTech SE, the colorectal cancer vaccine trial is one of several taking place across NHS trusts.

German biotechnology company BioNTech has signed a deal with the Department of Health and Social Care to enrol up to 10,000 patients in clinical trials by the end of 2030 for personalised cancer therapies, the German drug maker said. The multi-year collaboration is focused on cancer immunotherapies based on mRNA or other drug classes, infectious disease vaccines, and investments into expanding the company's footprint in the UK, BioNTech said in a statement on Thursday (January 5). Under the agreement, the parties plan to utilise UK's clinical trial network, genomics and health data assets, aiming to enrol the first cancer patient in the second half of 2023, the company said.

A groundbreaking immunotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is being trialed in the UK for the first time, with the NIHR UCLH Clinical Research Facility (CRF) as the lead research site. Developed by German biotech firm BioNTech, the new vaccine, named BNT116, can prime the immune system to recognise and combat cancer cells. Janusz Racz, a 67-year-old lung cancer patient from London, was the first participant to receive this new vaccine. According to Siow Ming Lee, a UCLH consultant medical oncologist who is leading the national study, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, with an estimated 1.8 million deaths reported in 2020 "We are now entering this very exciting new era of mRNA-based immunotherapy clinical trials to investigate the treatment of lung cancer," he said. Supported by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at UCLH, the study aims to evaluate the safety and tolerance of the immunotherapy, its efficacy in targeting tumours on its own, and its potential to enhance the effectiveness of established chemotherapy or immunotherapy treatments.