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Company News: BioNTech Honored as WuXi AppTec Biotech Company of the Year at Scrip Awards 2017

BioNTech AG, a fully-integrated biotechnology company pioneering individualized cancer immunotherapy, today announced that it has received the WuXi AppTec Biotech Company of the Year Award at the 2017 Scrip Awards ceremony in London.

Sean Marett, Chief Operating Officer of BioNTech, said: “We are very proud to receive the WuXi AppTec Biotech Company of the Year Award, which is an extraordinary distinction for us. Our last year was marked by important achievements such as concluding a deal with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, further progression of our clinical pipeline and additional publications in Nature, further supporting our scientific approach.”

BioNTech was able to close a landmark deal with Genentech in 2016, in which costs and profits are equally shared between the collaboration partners. The Company´s mRNA clinical development pipeline was further endorsed in 2016 by an article published in Nature highlighting the first example of a universally applicable and systemic mRNA cancer immunotherapy vaccine approach to targeting dendritic cells in cancer patients. Additional publications this year in Nature and Nature Medicine, describing encouraging initial clinical results from BioNTech’s individualized mRNA-based vaccine targeting neoepitopes and the reporting of elimination of large tumors in mice by mRNA-encoded bispecific antibodies respectively, provided additional validation of BioNTech’s underlying technologies.

Together with Genentech, BioNTech is currently testing its individualized mRNA cancer immunotherapies in clinical trials. As BioNTech is conducting the single batch, just-in-time manufacturing for these trials, the Company continues to enhance its manufacturing competencies and capacities while developing a fully automated and digitalized production process together with its global partner Siemens.

Launched 13 years ago, the Scrip Awards provide an opportunity to acknowledge the essential role of the pharmaceutical, biotech and other allied industries in improving healthcare, with the honors spanning the entire range of industry activities, from new drug launches to innovative deals, outsourcing and fundraising.