Siemens assists BioNTech in personalised cancer vaccines production

A strategic collaboration has been announced by Siemens and BioNTech, whereby BioNTech subsidiaries, BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals and EUFETS, will work with Siemens to produce a fully automated and digitalised production site, providing capacity for BioNTech’s personalised cancer vaccines to serve worldwide markets.

The cooperation will optimise automation and digitalisation technology for paperless, commercial-scale good manufacturing practice (GMP) production of truly personalised medicines. BioNTech intends to integrate all necessary process and production steps for manufacturing its IVACindividualized vaccines at a larger scale.

Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNTech, said: “We are pleased to partner with Siemens on automating a specialised, proprietary manufacturing process for truly personalised medicine. Siemens’ world-class expertise in engineering and optimising automatic manufacturing processes will be of great value in making personalised cancer treatment for patients available to all.”

Eckard Eberle, CEO of the Siemens Business Unit Process Automation, added: “The development and manufacturing of personalised medicine is connected with massive amounts of data. Solutions such as our manufacturing operations management (MOM) software are able to handle the complexity of this innovative new process technology. Together with BioNTech’s competence in individualised medicine, we will pave the way for a digital plant with an efficient and completely paperless production.”

The IVAC MUTANOME immunotherapy approach is based on targeting the unique mutation signature of an individual patient’s tumour. It is engineered on demand and administered as an individual treatment. IVAC MUTANOME is currently in a Phase I/IIa clinical trial for the treatment of malignant melanoma.