3 ms·
From poking around on the BioNTech website and their associated press releases and papers from people who work there, it seemed that their founding goal was to
by a-dub 6y ago
From poking around on the BioNTech website and their associated press releases and papers from people who work there, it seemed that their founding goal was to develop personalized gene therapies for cancer. (Do a biopsy, send it in, cook some mRNA, send back a shot...)
My understanding is there was basically a "hey, we can repurpose our stuff for something really important" moment. Which they did, enabling them to produce a working shot with unbelievable speed. (I read somewhere that sequenced sars-cov2 genome to first vaccine shot was something like 48h for them)
- hilbertseries 6y agoThis leaves out the part where they were already working mRNA vaccines for other diseases, like influenza. They repurposed that work, much the same as moderna did to make their vaccine.
- XorNot 6y agoThat's still lightning fast by any measure. Being able to turn your tools to a new problem rapidly is a credit to you and the tools.