BioNtech and Pfizer teamed up for one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in history. Now, according to a recent Interesting Engineering article, BioNTech says it has made breakthroughs that could lead to cancer vaccines in the near future. Professors Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, the husband and wife team behind BioNTech, believe the mRNA technology used for their COVID-19 vaccine could be tweaked to make the immune system attack cancer cells rather than coronaviruses as soon as 2030.
The company is working to create treatments for a range of cancers including bowel cancer and melanoma. However, cancer cells that make up tumors can contain a wide variety of different proteins, which make them hard to target without attacking healthy surrounding tissue.
