BioNTech announced the development considered as a great milestone towards the production of vaccines in Rwanda on Wednesday 21st December 2022.

The facility will be built on 30,000 square kilometers in Kigali Special Economic Zone. It will have two BioNTainers made up of assembled containers.

“BioNTech SE reached the next milestone in the establishment of scalable mRNA vaccine production in Africa. The six ISO-sized shipping containers for the first BioNTainer have finished construction in Europe, underwent quality checks by BioNTech experts and are being prepared for shipment to Kigali, Rwanda, where they are expected to arrive in the first quarter of 2023,” reads part of the statement released by BioNTech.

The development comes at a time when, BioNTech continues to develop and build its state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Kigali, Rwanda, following the groundbreaking in June 2022.

The facility will be housing the first BioNTainers and is expected to become a node in a decentralized and robust end-to-end manufacturing network in Africa.

BioNTech also expects to ship BioNTainers to Senegal and potentially South Africa in close coordination with each respective country and the African Union.

Vaccines to be manufactured in this Africa-wide network will be dedicated to people residing in member states of the African Union, with the aim to support access to novel medicines.

In addition, BioNTech is advancing mRNA-based vaccine candidates to address malaria and tuberculosis, based on the company’s mRNA platform. The vaccine candidates are expected to enter first-in-human trials in late 2022 or early 2023.

About BioNTech

Biopharmaceutical New Technologies (BioNTech) is a next generation immunotherapy company pioneering novel therapies for cancer and other serious diseases.

The company exploits a wide array of computational discovery and therapeutic drug platforms for the rapid development of novel biopharmaceuticals.

Its broad portfolio of oncology product candidates includes individualized and off-the-shelf mRNA-based therapies, innovative chimeric antigen receptor T cells, bi-specific checkpoint immuno-modulators, targeted cancer antibodies and small molecules.

Based on its deep expertise in mRNA vaccine development and in-house manufacturing capabilities, BioNTech and its collaborators are developing multiple mRNA vaccine candidates for a range of infectious diseases alongside its diverse oncology pipeline.

BioNTech has established a broad set of relationships with multiple global pharmaceutical collaborators, including Genmab, Sanofi, Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, Regeneron, Genevant, Fosun Pharma, and Pfizer.

The first six containers for the first BioNTainer have underwent quality checks by BioNTech experts and are being prepared for shipment to Kigali.

The six containers are expected to arrive in Rwanda in the first quarter of 2022.