{"id":323322,"date":"2026-03-11T00:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T00:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/323322\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T00:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T00:58:09","slug":"couple-behind-the-pfizer-covid-vaccine-are-leaving-germanys-biontech-to-start-new-firm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/323322\/","title":{"rendered":"Couple behind the Pfizer Covid vaccine are leaving Germany\u2019s BioNTech to start new firm"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new venture will be the couple\u2019s third company, after they founded Ganymed Pharmaceuticals in 2001 and BioNTech in 2008.<\/p>\n

It will explore mRNA innovations, building on BioNTech\u2019s blockbuster Comirnaty coronavirus vaccine, developed along with US pharma giant Pfizer.<\/p>\n

The product was both the first Covid vaccine to receive approval in the West and the first mRNA vaccine approved for widespread use.<\/p>\n

Unlike traditional vaccines which contain some form of target virus or its components, mRNA vaccines contain genetic materials that instruct human cells to make proteins typical of the targeted virus – allowing production to be scaled up more quickly since the virus need not be grown in the lab.<\/p>\n

BioNTech will supply the new firm with some patent rights and technologies in exchange for a minority stake, it said.<\/p>\n

BioNTech\u2019s chairman Helmut Jeggle said he hoped the new firm would help mRNA-based technologies \u201cto reach their full potential\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look forward to working together with their new company on potential combination therapy approaches,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

-Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new venture will be the couple\u2019s third company, after they founded Ganymed Pharmaceuticals in 2001 and BioNTech…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[192,4057,53443,12510,138,1656,8414,8607,81317,1138,19363,174557,33450,12514,2845,117,111,139,69,46745,3048,4497,223,61,1865,14216,1533],"class_list":["post-323322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-are","tag-behind","tag-biontech","tag-blockbuster","tag-business","tag-company","tag-couple","tag-covid","tag-covid19","tag-firm","tag-founders","tag-germanys","tag-known","tag-leave","tag-leaving","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pfizer","tag-said","tag-start","tag-the","tag-to","tag-today","tag-vaccine","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}