BioNTech and Siemens cooperate on production of personalised cancer vaccines
Siemens will develop and construct an automated and paperless manufacturing site
BioNTech, a German biotechnology company developing personalised cancer treatments, is to collaborate with Siemens on the construction of a paperless automated and digitalised production site for personalised cancer vaccines.
BioNTech's subsidiaries, BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals, a technology leader in the rapidly growing field of synthetic messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics, and development, testing and manufacturing services provider Eufets, will work with Siemens to achieve this.
The cooperation will enable BioNTech to establish and integrate all necessary process and production steps for manufacturing its IVAC personalised vaccines at a larger scale.
The tie-up brings together each partner’s competences to optimise automation and digitalisation technology for paperless, commercial-scale GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) manufacturing of personalised medicines.
Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNTech, said: 'We are pleased to partner with Siemens on automating a specialised, proprietary manufacturing process for personalised medicine. Siemens’ expertise in engineering and optimising automatic manufacturing processes will be of great value in making personalised cancer treatment for patients available to all.'
Eckard Eberle, CEO of the Siemens Business Unit Process Automation, added: 'The development and manufacturing of personalised medicine is connected with massive amounts of data. Solutions such as our manufacturing operations management (MOM) software are able to handle the complexity of this innovative new process technology. Together with BioNTech’s competence in individualised medicine, we will pave the way for a digital plant with an efficient and completely paperless production.'
The IVAC MUTANOME immunotherapy approach is based on targeting the unique mutation signature of an individual patient’s tumour. It is engineered on demand and administered as an individual treatment. It is currently in a Phase I/IIa clinical trial for the treatment of malignant melanoma.
Siemens offers a paperless manufacturing solution for enhancing both efficiency and product quality, while at the same time bringing down costs. Fully integrated communication is established between the automation level and manufacturing IT. As a central access point for all process and quality relevant data, the solution links advanced scheduling with the manufacturing execution and the laboratory management system. This enables complete electronic recording and documentation of quality-related production data, while eliminating time-consuming manual procedures and paper-based batch reports. Paperless manufacturing thus accelerates the design, execution, review and release of pharmaceutical production processes and electronic batch records (EBRs).