(Reuters) – COVID-19 vaccine inventor BioNTech said on Friday it was looking into building malaria and tuberculosis vaccine production sites in Rwanda and Senegal, narrowing down its search for African locations.
Like its Comirnaty-branded shot to prevent disease from the coronavirus, the future malaria and tuberculosis vaccines would be based on the so-called messenger RNA technology, it added.
Building on its success with Partner in COVID-19 shots, BioNTech said in July it would seek to develop a vaccine for the mosquito-borne illness malaria, eyeing production in Africa.
In a meeting with Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, Senegalese President Macky Sall and European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Berlin on Friday, BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin affirmed the German biotech firm’s intention to manufacture mRNA vaccines on the African continent, BioNTech said.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger, editing by Thomas Escritt)
