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.

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.

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.

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

The lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Karl Racine’s office, accuses Amazon of controlling nearly 70% of e-commerce sales, leading to high consumer prices. Holding nearly 70% of commercial sales, Amazon is sued against antitrust in the US The complaint was received by the District of Columbia Attorney’s Office, which said: “This online retail platform benefits and is protected by Amazon’s anti-competitive business practices. That leaves consumers vulnerable. do not have access to the best products at the lowest cost”. In addition, Amazon also caused prices across the entire online retail market to increase virtual prices for products sold on Amazon.com as well as on competitors’ online retail sales platforms. Also in the lawsuit, the e-commerce group used methods to prevent third-party sellers on its platform from offering products at lower prices than competitors. Amazon also responded to AFP that sellers set their own prices for the products they offer in Amazon’s stores, and this response contradicts comments made by the Justice Department. This e-commerce group also prides itself on offering the lowest prices with the best selection unlike any other online platform, so Amazon reserves the right not to attach deals to products that don’t have it. competitive price for customers. This lawsuit has Amazon possibly forced to charge higher prices on its e-commerce platform. The lawsuit is intended to block Amazon from anticompetitive practices as well as claims for damages and other penalties. According to eMarketer, Amazon’s e-commerce market share in the US in 2020 is 39.8% and will increase in 2021 to 44.1%, equivalent to the amount of 367.19 billion USD. According to statistics, Amazon’s profit in the first 3 months of 2021 reached 8.1 billion USD, 3 times higher than the same period in 2020. In 2020, the US Federal and State Antitrust Enforcement Agency filed lawsuits against Facebook and Google for allegedly dominating illegal markets.

According to analysts, Bitcoin is too expensive, causing investors to rush to find new digital currencies to profit. As a result, Ethereum has increased by more than 40% in value in the past April. Ethereum cryptocurrency was launched in 2013 with the purpose of being used to transact for an intranet of the same name. Now it is turning these crypto holders into billionaires with skyrocketing prices. The Ethereum cryptocurrency is also benefiting from the rise of NFTs, aka non-fungible tokens. This is a digital asset designed to represent ownership of unique virtual items such as art and sports memorabilia. Many NFTs like CryptoKitties and CryptoPunks are all running on Ethereum. However, this outburst of activity has resulted in congestion on the Ethereum network. Ethereum is currently being upgraded with the ambition of enabling faster transaction times and reducing the amount of power required to process transactions.

Reuters will start charging an access fee of $ 34.99 / month. (Source: Getty images) On April 15, British news agency Reuters News – one of the world’s largest news agencies specializing in providing articles, images, graphics and videos for newspapers, radio stations, television stations, Internet and other Other media – notification will start charge for access to news on its website. According to the notice posted on the Reuters homepage, the fee to register an account at Reuters.com will cost 34.99 USD / month – the same as the fee that the competitor of Reuters is Bloomberg financial news agency (US) is applicable to customers. The announcement said Reuters would allow readers to read 5 articles for free, but would then require users to sign up for an account if they want to continue to update information on Reuters.com. It is not clear when Reuters will begin charging for the service. Reuters marketing director Josh London described the move as a “streak digital converter the biggest at Reuters for a decade. ” The fee for readers is a hot topic in the period of traditional printing press revenue decline, while electronic newspapers are struggling about revenue sources. Paywall (roughly translated as “Wall of fees”) will be displayed asking readers to pay or subscribe when they want to read the information in the article. The Wall Street Journal was the first newspaper to adopt a fee-for-readers model in 1996. After that, most major American publications have studied this strategy, including The New York Times – the newspaper is Considered as one of the examples of paywall’s success. In 2018, Reuters’ biggest competitor, Bloomberg, also implemented charging fees for its information. Although not disclosing the number of subscribers, but Bloomberg claims this number is much higher than expected.