DESY’s X-ray source PETRA III points possible ways to better RNA vaccines
The pharmaceutical company BioNTech and the University of Mainz are conducting research with other partners on the EMBL beamline
The Mainz-based biotech company BioNTech, which recently presented the first promising results for a coronavirus vaccine together with the US company Pfizer, is already conducting research on the next generation of RNA drugs at DESY’s X-ray source PETRA III. Using the P12 beamline, operated by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory EMBL, BioNTech has been investigating, together with the Universities of Mainz, Tel Aviv and Leiden as well as the Research Centre Jülich and EMBL, how so-called messenger RNA (mRNA) can be packaged better so as to be more effective in the target organism. The researchers are reporting a number of results in three papers, published in the journals Applied Nano Materials, Cells and Langmuir. The papers also illustrate the potential of analytical research carried out with the help of the research infrastructure available on the DESY campus.