Germany’s BioNTech, Pfizer’s partner in vaccines against COVID-19, said the two companies would launch tests on humans for next-generation vaccines that protect against a wide variety of coronaviruses in the second half of the year.
Their experimental work on images that go beyond the current approach includes T-cell enhancement vaccines designed primarily to prevent severe disease if the virus becomes more dangerous, and pan-coronavirus images that protect against the wider family of viruses and its mutations.
In presentation slides published on the BioNTech website for Investor’s Day, the German biotechnology company said its goal was to “provide lasting alternative protection”.
The two partners, creators of the world’s most widely used vaccine against COVID-19, are currently discussing with regulators improved versions of their established vaccines for better protection against the Omicron variant and its sublines.
The persistent mutation of the virus in new variants that more easily evade protection with vaccines, as well as declining human immune memory, have added urgency to the demand from companies, governments and health authorities for more reliable remedies.
As part of efforts to further strengthen its infectious disease business, BioNTech said it is working independently on precision antibiotics that kill superbugs that have become resistant to currently available anti-infectives.
BioNTech, which did not say when the trials could begin, relied on PhagoMed technology, which it acquired last October.
The Vienna-based antibiotic developer has done work on enzymes produced by viruses that kill bacteria that break through the bacterial cell wall.
Drug-resistant infections are on the rise due to overuse of antibiotics and leakage into the environment in the production of antibiotics.
Public health researchers estimate the total number of people dying annually from antibiotic-resistant infections in the United States and the European Union at nearly 70,000.
(Additional reports by Patricia Weiss; Editing by Alison Williams)
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