Individualized Cancer
Medicine

Ushering in a new era of cancer medicine

When we started BioNTech in 2008 we asked ourselves a fundamental question – if every patient’s tumor is unique, why do we treat all patients the same? We saw immense potential in leveraging a tumor’s unique profile to enable the patient’s immune system to locate and target the specific cancer cells and engage to attack the tumor. We founded BioNTech to advance and develop key technologies and bring together the right people to realize our vision for the future of cancer medicine.

Prof. Ugur Sahin, M.D., Chief Executive Officer

The recent convergence of breakthrough technologies in life sciences has enabled innovative concepts to address the immunobiology of cancer at its core. One of these breakthroughs has been the establishment of cancer immunotherapy in the armamentarium of cancer treatments. Another has been the emerging progress towards individualized medicine. Technologies such as next-generation sequencing, or NGS, have confirmed beyond doubt the problematic diversity of tumors on the inter-patient level. At the same time, NGS enables fast, cost-efficient and precise high-resolution mapping of each patient’s individual disease.

We believe the application of these breakthrough technologies has the potential to change drug development and profoundly alter the oncology treatment landscape. The ability to translate a comprehensive molecular map of an individual tumor into treatment decisions, and make individually tailored therapeutics available, have become the focus of the next generation of cancer therapy.

The technology necessary to leapfrog advancements in oncology now exists. However, to realize its potential, a radical paradigm shift in drug development is required.

Equipped to deliver

Leveraging our scientific and business expertise, we and our collaborators have advanced a development pipeline of over 20 product candidates, of which eight have entered into nine ongoing clinical trials. While we believe our approach is broadly applicable across a number of therapeutic areas, our most advanced programs are focused on oncology, where we have treated over 250 patients across 17 tumor types to date.