Siemens has entered into a strategic collaboration with BioNTech for the good manufacturing practice (GMP) production of personalized cancer vaccines.

Under the deal, BioNTech's subsidiaries, BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals and EUFETS, will work with Siemens to build a fully automated and digitalized production site to provide capacity for BioNTech's personalized cancer vaccines to serve worldwide markets.

BioNTech will now be able to establish and integrate all necessary process and production steps for manufacturing its individualized vaccines against cancer (IVAC) at a larger scale.

The deal brings together each partner's specific competences in order to optimize automation and digitalization technology for a paperless, commercial-scale GMP manufacturing of truly personalized medicines.

Engineered on demand and administered as an individual treatment, the IVAC Mutanome Immunotherapy approach is based on targeting the unique mutation signature of an individual patient's tumor.

Currently, IVAC Mutanome is in a Phase I/IIa clinical trial for the treatment of malignant melanoma.

Siemens Business Unit Process Automation CEO Eckard Eberle said: "The development and manufacturing of personalized 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 individualized medicine, we will pave the way for a digital plant with an efficient and completely paperless production."

The IVAC platform uses tumor-specific information and tailors each patient's personalized RNA-based immunotherapy to activate the immune system of each patient to recognize, target, strike and combat his or her individual cancer.

Image: BioNTech and Siemens collaborate on automation for the GMP production of personalized medicine. Photo: courtesy of BioNTech AG.