Rabat – The UK government announced on Friday striking a partnership agreement with German pharmaceutical company BioNTech to start human trials for a vaccine that could potentially cure cancer and other diseases.
Under the deal, BioNTech would provide cancer patients in England with early access to the trials. The vaccine aims to boost patients’ immune systems and protect the body from cancerous cells.
The vaccine will be available for both early-stage cancer patients and terminally ill patients, according to converging reports. The vaccine is expected to target and eliminate cancer cells and protect patients from having the illness again.
To carry out human trials, BioNTech is set to open a new Research and Development (R&D) center, a lab in Cambridge, and its headquarters will be in London reported outlet CNBC.
BioNTech will start administering vaccines to patients starting in September 2023 and the vaccination campaign will continue throughout the coming seven years. A total of 10,000 patients are set to be part of the trials.
Commenting on the news, BioNTech’s CEO Ugur Sahin said in a statement that his company learned from the COVID-19 pandemic the importance of collaborating with international health institutions including the British National Health Service (NHS), academics, and regulators.
“Our goal is to accelerate the development of immunotherapies and vaccines using technologies we have been researching for over 20 years,” the statement reads.
Their work will include “various cancer types and infectious diseases affecting collectively hundreds of millions of people worldwide,” he added.
The German firm is not the only company investing in the research and development of cancer vaccines. American pharmaceutical giant Moderna has also announced that it is working to develop an mRNA cancer vaccine through a collaboration with another pharmaceutical company called Merck.
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