Dr. Holger Kissel Vice President Business Alliances at BioNTechabout NLSDays’ Vaccine Crosslinks: From Cancer to COVID super session

Text: Chelsea Ranger, Senior advisor, SwedenBIO

BioNTech’s well-known success began early, with a seed investment of €150 million. Can you tell us a bit about BioNTech’s early strategies as a foundation for the company of today?
In 2001, at the University of Mainz, Uğur Şahin, Özlem Türeci, and Christoph Huber founded Ganymed Pharmaceuticals AG, a successful biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of antibodies for the treatment of solid tumors, which was ultimately acquired by Astellas in 2016.

During Ganymed’s growth, the founders developed strong relationships with their investors, which of course translated well into their next endeavor. The three founders went on to found BioNTech SE, short for Biopharmaceutical New Technologies, in 2008 with a seed investment of €150 million and a long-term vision to develop and produce treatments for individualized cancer immunotherapy, of course built upon years of existing relationships. I think that also says a lot about the company today—long-term relationships are always important.

Prior to the pandemic, you had already developed a number of partnerships, including with Pfizer on influenza vaccines. And then, a global pandemic and BioNTech became a household name. What are your biggest learnings from the pandemic and how do you think those learnings might further impact company developments?
In truth, the pandemic taught us that things we had long suspected to be important proved to be important. The pandemic confirmed that what we had been investing in for a long time was in fact what allowed us to develop a COVID-19 vaccine at “lightspeed,” so to speak. This includes manufacturing scale-up, the execution of first-in-human clinical trials, building a regulatory infrastructure, and a strong focus on execution within our partnership with Pfizer.
Working so closely with a larger company has allowed us to learn as well. We have been able to build better templates for potential launches of our wholly owned candidates. From the very beginning, BioNTech’s focus has always been on exploiting the full potential of the body’s immune system to successfully help address cancer and infectious diseases. The company has become an immunotherapy powerhouse—with fully integrated processes for discovery, pre-clinical and clinical development, and the infrastructure to commercialize our own products.

Building on the success of the COVID-19 vaccine and further expanding our manufacturing footprint, we announced in February that we have taken steps to promote scalable vaccine production by creating a turnkey, container-based manufacturing solution called “BioNTainers.” These offer a GMP-compliant, modular, and flexible manufacturing solution for mRNA-based vaccines. The concept is part of our efforts to democratize access to novel medicines worldwide and to be better prepared for potential future health threats. The first BioNTainer is expected to arrive in Africa at the end of this year.

What do you hope to offer and gain from Nordic Life Science Days this year?
From a financial perspective, it’s a difficult time at the moment for many biotechs, with money drying up, but that also means it is a great time for companies like ours to jump in and connect. We are always interested in any technology or product able to act in synergy with our immuno-oncology pipeline. This is not only limited to oncology or infectious diseases—we are effectively an immunotherapy company, which means we are broadly interested in how to modulate the immune system to address medical needs. For example, our therapeutic interest also includes autoimmune diseases and regenerative medicine.

As someone who has always worked in biotech, I am always excited to meet startups and hear their stories.