BioNTech pledges African access to its future cancer drugs

Germany’s BioNTech, which is preparing to produce its Covid-19 vaccine or other disease-preventing shots in Africa, said that novel cancer therapies it is working on will be available on the continent at affordable prices in future. Picture: Ian Landsberg/African News Agency (ANA).

Germany’s BioNTech, which is preparing to produce its Covid-19 vaccine or other disease-preventing shots in Africa, said that novel cancer therapies it is working on will be available on the continent at affordable prices in future. Picture: Ian Landsberg/African News Agency (ANA).

Published Feb 16, 2022

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Germany’s BioNTech, which is preparing to produce its Covid-19 vaccine or other disease-preventing shots in Africa, said that novel cancer therapies it is working on will be available on the continent at affordable prices in future.

“We pledge as BioNTech to develop our cancer medicines also according to the needs of the African people and enable affordable access to our immunotherapies to African states and African people,” the company's chief executive said at a news conference on Wednesday.

BioNTech earlier unveiled a vaccine factory made from shipping containers that it plans to ship to Africa as assembly kits to ease disparities in global Covid-19 vaccine access.

In November, BioNTech was awarded fast-track designation by US drugs regulators for the speedy review of a novel skin cancer therapy, which is based on RNA technology similar to the one that underpins its Covid-19 vaccine.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted the fast-track status to the BNT111 infusion, which is designed to instruct the body to produce four proteins that are characteristic of melanoma cells and trigger an immune response against those cancer cells in the body.

Melanoma is a particularly deadly type of skin cancer when it has started spreading to other parts of the body, which is the setting in which BNT111 is currently being tested.

A US patient with leukaemia has become the first woman and the third person to date to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes Aids, researchers reported on Tuesday.

The case of a middle-aged woman of mixed race, presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunisitic Infections in Denver, is also the first involving umbilical cord blood, a newer approach that may make the treatment available to more people. | Reuters

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