BioNTech Annual General Meeting Successful with mRNA technology

Status: 22.06.2021 10:25 a.m.

At today’s Annual General Meeting, the BioNTech top management can boast great successes. This is not only due to the corona vaccine, in which the company has left many competitors behind.

From Bianca von der Au, ARD stock exchange studio

What happened to the Tübingen-based vaccine manufacturer CureVac is actually the norm in the biotech industry: one drug candidate disappoints. Research is tedious and devours billions. The rapid success of the competitor BioNTech was more than a stroke of luck, believes asset manager Hendrik Leber from the private corporation Acatis. The Mainz biotech company did a lot of things right, he says. “BioNTech made the decision very quickly to develop a vaccine at all. And the choice of partner to work with Pfizer was an extremely good decision.” The US pharmaceutical company opened the door to the American market and at the same time pushed ahead with marketing and clinical studies at a rapid pace.

06/17/2021

CureVac Story of a disappointed hope

While the world is now being vaccinated with BioNTech, CureVac has proven to be ineffective. Why?

Does CureVac’s chance lie in the mutants?

The Tübingen competitor CureVac is not only lagging in terms of time, but also in terms of time Effectiveness of his vaccine after. Experts are divided as to whether this deficit can be made up at all. Pharmaceutical specialist Alexander Nuyken from the consulting company EY gives the race is not lost for CureVac – in view of the constant number of new mutations and a low vaccination rate among the world’s population.

05/18/2021

Race around “Vaccines 2.0” Who will win the fight against the mutants?

The manufacturers are working on the next generation of vaccines that should help against Covid variants.

mRNA vaccine with great potential

However, the EY expert sees enormous potential in biotechnology, especially in the field, beyond the corona vaccine novel mRNA technology , which CureVac is also researching. “It was originally not developed with Covid in mind, but for completely different therapies, such as cancer”recalls Nuyken. There is the potential to address other diseases with this technology, namely, according to the expert, “cheaper, faster and more efficient.”

There is great hope – not only among investors – that mRNA technology can develop effective agents against previously incurable diseases – not only against cancer, but also against Alzheimer’s, for example. BioNTech has been researching a vaccine against cancer for a long time and, a few days ago, treated a skin cancer patient with an mRNA vaccine for the first time in a phase II study.

04/21/2021

Medical research “March through for mRNA vaccines”

Despite initial skepticism, mRNA vaccines have become the pacemaker during the pandemic.

Would you like more willingness to take risks?

The path to the surprising success with the corona vaccine was only possible for BioNTech thanks to patient donors in the background. EY pharma expert Nuyken believes that there is a need for greater willingness to take risks in Germany. “How do we get the good science that we undoubtedly have in Germany in companies? And how can we then further develop these companies until they are ready for the market?”the expert asks.

He sees this as the biggest hurdle in the German environment. “In contrast to the American market, we have significantly less capital that is available for the development of these companies.” So it’s no wonder that CureVac and BioNTech have been listed on the Nasdaq technology exchange in the USA in the past two years. But also in Germany, Corona and the search for a vaccine have put the biotech industry in the (spotlight) light. According to EY, the German biotechnology company is in the Corona year 2020 so much capital flowed in as never before . In CureVac, the federal government even invested 300 million euros – a risky investment