Vaccines to treat cancer possible by 2030, say BioNTech founders

The husband and wife team behind one of the most successful Covid vaccines are working on a vaccine that targets cancer.

The co-founding partners of BioNTech, Uur ahin and zlem Treci, said they were optimistic about the future of cancer vaccines after making breakthrough discoveries.

Prof Treci talked about how the Covid vaccine could be used to attack cancer cells instead of coronaviruses.

Prof Sahin said they could be used in patients before the year 2030.

The Covid vaccine works by taking the genetic instructions for the Covid virus and putting them into the body. The cells take the instructions and make the spikeProtein. The immune system uses the antigens to tell it what to look for and try to attack.

Treci said that the immune system can beprimed to seek out and destroy cancer cells. The vaccine doesn't carry the code that identifies viruses, but it does have instructions for the cancer-causing genes.

The firm pivoted to produce Covid vaccines in the face of the global emergency, even though they were working on a vaccine for cancer. Several cancer vaccines are being used in clinical trials. Treci said the success of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine gave back to cancer work.

There are a lot of hurdles that need to be cleared before the German firm can develop treatments for cancer. It's difficult to make a vaccine that targets all of the cancer cells and no healthy tissues because they can be studded with a wide variety of different proteins.

Treci said that BioNTech had learned how to make vaccines faster during the Pandemic and had a better understanding of how people respond to the vaccine. The rapid introduction of the Covid shot helped regulators work out how to approve the vaccine. She said that this will speed up the cancer vaccine.

Treci wasn't sure about the work. She said scientists are hesitant to say they will have a cure. We have a number of new discoveries and we will keep working on them.

Moderna said in August that it was suing Pfizer and BioNTech for patent violation over the company's Covid-19 vaccine.

Sahin said that their innovations are original. We will fight for our intellectual property because we have spent 20 years researching this type of treatment.