The corona vaccine manufacturer Biontech is expanding

The Mainz corona vaccine manufacturer Biontech is expanding. An extensive job creation is planned for the coming months, the company said, according to a report by "Welt am Sonntag". 500 new positions across all departments are currently advertised. Before the corona pandemic, the biotechnology company had more than 1,300 employees. Biopharmaceutical New Technologies, or Biontech for short, worked primarily on new therapeutic options against cancer. Together with the US company Pfizer, Biontech then developed the first vaccine against the coronavirus approved in many countries last year. To do this, the company used the new mRNA technology, which is also used in the development of cancer immunotherapies. The vaccine, named BNT162b2, is manufactured in Pfizer plants for worldwide use. The mRNA vaccine is also the company's first approved product. According to the company, around 20 more are still in the development phase as potential drugs. In the past year and a half, the number of Biontech employees has increased to around 2000. According to the "Welt am Sonntag" report, the manufacturer now wants to invest in its own sales team of 60 employees for the first time in order to promote the marketing of approved products itself. "We set up Biontech as a fully integrated company right from the start. With our own research and development, production and now also sales," said board member Sierk Poetting of the newspaper. According to the report, the production network should also continue to grow in the coming months. "We are expanding production capacities as needed," continued Poetting. The aim is to build a global network for mRNA production.