Andreas Czech from BioNTech in Germany presented at the Biopharma Day in Boston on “The potential of therapeutic mRNA—and how to measure it.” They spoke about the vision of the BioNTech pharmaceutical company: to use the immune system’s power to fight cancer and other diseases. The company was founded in 2008 by three tumor immunologists. The team already had made progress on the use of mRNA to express certain antigens. Four years later, clinical trials were started. Czech explained how the company helped use mRNA therapeutics and obtain FDA approval for the COVID-19 vaccine. So far, BioNTech has one approved product and over thirty-five candidates. The company has ~6,300 employees and manufacturing facilities all over the globe. The company is also testing the use of containers with mRNA production capabilities. The FixVac and iNeSST mRNA platforms allow different production speeds and outputs. BioNTech is expanding to include infectious diseases such as HSV, malaria, tuberculosis, mpox, and shingles. The system they use allows engineered mRNA production. Quality control of mRNA involves GMP environment testing and numerous systems. Sequencing as QC can measure mRNA and provide information about the integrity of the molecules.
