FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany’s BioNTech on Friday was awarded fast track designation by U.S. drugs regulators for the speedy review of a novel skin cancer therapy, which is based on RNA technology similar to the one that underpins its COVID-19 vaccine.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted the fast track status to the BNT111 infusion, which is designed to instruct the body to produce four proteins that are characteristic of melanoma cells and trigger an immune response against those cancer cells in the body.
Melanoma is a particularly deadly type of skin cancer when it has started spreading to other parts of the body, which is the setting in which BNT111 is currently being tested.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger, editing by Thomas Escritt)
