The Mainz-based pharmaceutical company Biontech has celebrated global success with its corona vaccine. The group is now expanding its location in Marburg in central Hesse. The company’s first commercial-scale production facility for plasmid DNA is scheduled to start there at the end of this year. During a visit to the plant, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that he intends to further strengthen Germany as a research location.
“We have to make faster approval processes possible for factories, for new medicines, for research projects and also for the use of research data,” said the SPD politician. “We now want to contribute in a very short time with many very specific legislative proposals to ensure that the medical industry and healthcare economy make progress.”
Before that, Scholz got an idea of the new plasmid DNA production in Marburg. According to Biontech, plasmids are small, circular DNA molecules and are a key starting material for the production of mRNA-based vaccines and therapies. In the past, the vaccine manufacturer had to purchase plasmid DNA externally.
More flexible and autonomous
With the new production facility, which costs around 40 million euros, Biontech will be able to produce plasmid DNA independently and thus become more flexible and autonomous in the production of starting materials for its oncology and COVID-19 vaccines, explained Biontech co-founder and medical director Özlem Türeci.
“We need a research landscape that we have to stabilize and further develop together with the countries in Germany so that basic research can take place in Germany, which then enables the next big discoveries,” said Scholz. The “new Germany pace” that the federal government presented for the construction of pipelines and LNG terminals should also apply when it comes to Germany as a research and science location.
Biontech announced in January that it wanted to take over a British start-up specializing in artificial intelligence. Just a few days earlier, it had become known that the Mainz-based company wanted to set up a research and development center for cancer therapy in Cambridge. The aim is to treat up to 10,000 patients with personalized cancer immunotherapies by 2030 – either as part of clinical studies or as approved treatments.
On the occasion of the Chancellor’s visit, several left-wing groups called for demonstrations against the delivery of the “Marder” tanks. According to the police, a “low double-digit number” of demonstrators gathered in downtown Marburg on Thursday afternoon.
