BioNTech
Another key player in the fight against COVID-19 celebrates a win. BioNTech was founded in 2008 to focus on cancer immunotherapy. Today, individualized immunotherapy remains the primary goal, despite the company rising to superstardom in the COVID-19 field with its collaboration with Pfizer on the Comirnaty vaccine. Even before the pandemic, the company was making a name for itself by working with other large pharma companies, including Eli Lilly, Sanofi, Genentech – mainly on mRNA-based research. In 2018, the company signed an agreement with Pfizer to develop mRNA-based vaccines for influenza. This early work would eventually pave the way for a COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer and BioNTech announced a letter of intent to co-develop a COVID-19 vaccine on March 17, 2020 – with the work building on research from the influenza partnership.
And the rest is history.
The company recently announced its Q4 and full year financial results for 2021; total revenue exceeded 18.9 billion euro and net profit was around 10.3 billion euro.
Key facts
Global headquarters: Mainz, Germany
Number of Employees: 1300
Sales revenue in 2021: 18.9 billion euros
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Honorable Mention: Moderna
