The deal, billed as BioNTech’s largest to date and unveiled at the JP Morgan healthcare conference today, includes $362 million upfront with another £200 million on offer if performance targets are met.
The two companies have already been working together since 2019, and agreed a strategic alliance in 2020 centred around the formation of a joint AI and machine learning lab straddling London in the UK and Mainz in Germany, with the aim of applying enterprise-level AI to drug discovery and design, protein engineering, and operations including manufacturing.
