A doctor wearing a protective suit works at a university hospital in Essen, Germany, April 9, 2020. (Photo by Ulrich Hufnagel/Xinhua)
Revenues from collaboration agreements went up because of new projects with U.S. company Pfizer and China's Fosun Pharma "as part of the company's BNT162 vaccine program against COVID-19," according to BioNTech.
BERLIN, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- Revenues of German pharmaceutical company BioNTech in the second quarter (Q2) of 2020 reached 41.8 million euros (49.3 million U.S. dollars), compared with 25.8 million euros in Q2 last year, the firm announced on Tuesday.
Revenues from collaboration agreements went up as well because of new projects with U.S. company Pfizer and China's Fosun Pharma "as part of the company's BNT162 vaccine program against COVID-19," according to BioNTech.
However, net loss increased to 88.3 million euros in Q2, compared to a net loss of only 50.1 million euros at the same time last year. At the end of the second quarter, the German company held cash and cash equivalents of 573 million euros.
"We made significant progress in the second quarter toward our goal of advancing our oncology programs and toward bringing a COVID-19 vaccine to market as quickly as possible," said Ugur Sahin, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of BioNTech.
The German biopharmaceutical company and its U.S. partner Pfizer were planning to "file for market authorization or regulatory approval as early as October 2020" if the current clinical study on their potential COVID-19 vaccine was successful, BioNTech noted.
BioNTech's employees managed to initiate the trial for the COVID-19 vaccine program "in record time," added Sahin on Tuesday when presenting the company's Q2 figures.
At the end of July, a worldwide study on the potential vaccine had started with up to 30,000 participants. The clinical trial in phase II/III was intended to show, among other things, whether the ingredient BNT162b2 actually protects against infections with COVID-19.
In addition, a phase one study with vaccine candidate BNT162b1 started to "evaluate safety and immunogenicity in Chinese participants to support potential regulatory approval in China," according to BioNTech. ■