BioNTech and Regeneron expand collaboration on FixVac and Libtayo

Confirming that BioNTech (Nasdaq: BNTX) is not just a one trick pony - having been behind the discovery of the most successful COIVD-19 vaccines, the German biotech today announced the expansion of its strategic collaboration with Regeneron (Nasdaq: REGN) to advance the company’s FixVac candidate BNT116 in combination with Libtayo (cemiplimab), a PD-1 inhibitor, in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Under the terms of the agreement the companies plan to jointly conduct clinical trials to evaluate their combination in different patient populations with advanced NSCLC. Lung cancer is worldwide one of the most common diagnosed malignant cancer types and the leading cause of cancer death. NSCLC is the most common type of lung cancer, making up about 85% of all lung cancers.

“Advancing the sixth FixVac product candidate based on uridine mRNA into clinical development underlines the versatility and potential of this platform. Advanced NSCLC still has a five-year survival rate of only 25% leaving patients with very limited treatment options. We believe that a potent vaccine that induces strong T cell responses against shared tumor associated antigens combined with PD-1 blockade that further enables the activated T cell repertoire will help to address the high unmet medical need in this indication,” said BioNTech co-founder and chief medical officer Dr Ozlem Tureci, adding: “We look forward to further building on our successful collaboration with Regeneron to accelerate the clinical development of BNT116 in our growing mRNA oncology pipeline.”