A couple of scientists from Germany, professors Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, founded the company BioNTech in 2008. The campaign investigates the issue of immunotherapy, it is their developments that formed the basis of the production of the mRNA vaccine against Covid all over the world.
After the success with mRNA vaccines against Covid, scientists started to develop a vaccine against cancer.
Cancer is a devastating disease and continues to be a huge burden worldwide. Because each type of cancer is unique, we believe that immunotherapy provides us with the right tools to treat each form of cancer with the appropriate method and treatment method. That's why we've developed a number of technology platforms and therapeutic approaches to find the best treatment options for each tumor disease.
The company BioNTech is currently conducting several tests aimed at "teaching" the immune system to recognize cancer cells and destroy them. We have already started the final stages of clinical trials - on people.
The mRNA method works by sending instructions to cells that produce antigens or specific proteins. In Covid, this target is part of the adhesion protein. In a cancer vaccine, it will be a tumor cell surface marker. That is, instead of instructions against Covid, the vaccine will contain instructions for the production of cancer antigens. The difficulty lies in the enormous variety of cancers, each individual type of cancer is a separate group of proteins for which "instructions" need to be provided. However, scientists assure that the experience in the production of mRNA vaccines in recent years has helped to better understand immune reactions, they have learned to react more quickly to changes and produce vaccines faster.
mRNA vaccines have proven to be extremely successful and have brought huge sums of money to manufacturers. However, legal disputes are still raging, with Moderna suing Pfizer and BioNTech for patent infringement, essentially claiming that key elements of their mRNA technology were copied. At the same time, scientists insist that their development is unique and are ready to defend their rights in court. These patent disputes will not stop the spread of Covid vaccines - all booster vaccines are mRNA vaccines. This is a technology that reached its peak during the pandemic. Now it's time to beat cancer.
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