About the partnership
The UK BioNTech Cancer Care Partnership was formed to provide eligible NHS cancer patients access to the latest investigational therapies and accelerate research into new ways to treat cancer.
On this page
The ambition is to provide up to 10,000 UK cancer patients with access to personalised immunotherapies by 2030, either in clinical trials or as authorised treatments. Clinical trials for investigational cancer therapies often take place only in the largest academic hospitals. A key feature of the partnership is to enable more NHS hospitals to offer clinical trials - not just the largest academic centres - so that patients can access them no matter where they live. BioNTech is working with the UK Government, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), NHS England and Health and Care Research Wales in this strategic partnership.
Learning from a pandemic
BioNTech is known for developing the first mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine to be approved and given in the UK, in collaboration with Pfizer. The UK delivered COVID-19 vaccines quickly because the NHS, academia, the medicines regulator and the private sector worked together in an exemplary way. This showed that drug development can be accelerated through close and focused collaboration. The UK BioNTech Cancer Care Partnership aims to take the lessons learned during the pandemic and apply them with the same urgency to cancer care.
The NHS Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad
To widen access to cancer vaccine trials in hospitals across England, NHS England, Genomics England and BioNTech are working together through the Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad.
Timeline for clinical trials
The partnership was launched in 2023 and clinical trials within this programme have already begun to recruit patients in the UK. The number of trials available will continue to increase in the coming years.
