In a joint venture, German biopharmaceutical firm BioNTech and Genevant Sciences, a genetic disorder therapeutics maker plan to develop mRNA therapy programmes targeting rare diseases with severely deficient medical attention.

The two companies have made an alliance to mutually develop and commercialize five mRNA therapeutic programmes sharing its costs and profits uniformly.

These drugs are planned to be developed clinically in 2020.

 “This 50/50 partnership to develop rare disease mRNA therapeutics recognizes the critical importance of both best-in-class nucleic acids and their delivery in RNA drug development.” said Genevant Sciences executive chairman Paris Panayiotopoulos adding, “BioNTech’s impressive molecular design expertise and Genevant’s leadership in RNA delivery are the ideal combination for developing cutting-edge mRNA therapies for rare disease patients who have limited or no treatment options today.”

In addition, this partnership includes special licenses for the application of Genevant’s lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery technology for five oncology programmes of BioNTech. They propose to merge the LNP technology with BioNTech’s mRNA drug discovery platform.

 BioNTech specializes in mRNA therapy development, its manufacturing infrastructure, understanding on mechanisms of action and clinical applications. The company is slated to further include a scalable, ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing competence to produce its personalized therapies for patients.