Roughly five months after AstraZeneca scrapped a major investment plan in its home country, the United Kingdom has found a fresh partner in mRNA specialist BioNTech.
BioNTech plans to invest up to 1 billion pounds sterling ($1.3 billion) over the next decade to beef up its R&D base in the U.K. The project will include the construction of two new research centers in the country, plus a U.K. headquarters for the German biopharma in London, which will also house an artificial intelligence “hub” led by BioNTech’s AI subsidiary InstaDeep.
As part of the commitment, the U.K. government has also agreed to award BioNTech with up to 129 million pounds ($172 million) in grant money payable over the project’s 10-year run. The government pledge is “one of the largest grants of its kind in U.K. history for a pharmaceutical company,” BioNTech said in a Tuesday press release.
The deal—which is hardly the first for BioNTech and the U.K.—comes a day after the country’s government unveiled a new 10-year R&D investment strategy aimed at growing the economy. Though specific funding will be determined “in the coming weeks,” the U.K.’s amped-up R&D budget could be used to support longer-term funding for infrastructure like research facilities, the government explained in a release on Monday.
BioNTech’s newly announced efforts are expected to create more than 400 full-time jobs in areas like drug development and bioinformatics once complete, the U.K. said in its own press release announcing the investment.
The biopharma’s planned R&D center in Cambridge—which is the home of AstraZeneca and already a U.K. biotech hub in its own right—will have space for around 90 scientists and focus on projects related to genomics, oncology, structural biology and regenerative medicine, according to the company’s release.
The second R&D center is “currently being planned,” BioNTech said, without providing details on potential site locations or the facility’s intended focus.
Meanwhile, the AI hub at BioNTech’s planned London headquarters will help the company explore disease causes, drug target selection and predictive analytics, the U.K. government said.
As the U.K. works to bolster its domestic life sciences industry, the BioNTech pledge is no doubt welcome news, especially after hometown hero AstraZeneca scrapped plans to invest 450 million pounds in a vaccine production site in Liverpool around the start of the year.
At the time, an AstraZeneca spokesperson told Fierce Pharma that several factors had influenced its decision, including the reduction of a planned financial contribution from the U.K. government.
AZ had initially telegraphed its investment plan—and won certain pledges—while the Conservative Party still led the U.K. government. But after the Labour Party’s victory in the U.K.’s 2024 General Election last year, the country’s new chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, allegedly wanted to reduce the amount of government support for AZ’s project, the Financial Times reported last August.
"Our revised government offer sought to ensure value for money for the taxpayer and followed due diligence of the investment put forward by AstraZeneca," U.K. science department minister Chris Bryant said of the situation in February, as quoted by Reuters.
Considering the 129-million-pound grant for BioNTech’s project—plus updated plans for the U.K.’s R&D budget—it appears the government may now be attempting to extend an olive branch to the industry.
Richard Torbett, chief executive of the trade group the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, seems to agree, calling the BioNTech project a “template for how the U.K. could unlock further life sciences sector growth by removing the barriers and roadblocks to investment.”
“Big investments like this are years in the making and require both sides to have confidence that the other will deliver on their commitments,” Torbett said in a May 20 statement. “Trust is slow to build, but this deal shows it is worth the time and the risk.”
BioNTech rose to prominence through the development of its Pfizer-partnered mRNA vaccine for COVID-19. As of late, the company has embarked on a mission to become a “global immunotherapy powerhouse,” with much of that strategy hinging on the development of new oncology meds and potential infectious disease vaccines.
Under a prior agreement with the U.K. inked in early 2023, BioNTech has pledged to accelerate clinical trials for its mRNA immunotherapies in a bid to provide personalized cancer treatments for up to 10,000 U.K. patients by the end of 2030. The terms of the pledge cover both investigational immunotherapies given in clinical trials and potential commercial products.