Biontech boss Uğur Şahin sees medicine on the right path to “controlling or ideally curing cancer in the long term”. “In principle, I see no reason why many types of cancer should not be detectable earlier and easier to cure,” Şahin told the news magazine “Der Spiegel” after a report on Sunday.
The background is a development that Şahin calls “the great knowledge revolution” – an ever faster spiral of progress and development leaps, driven by digital technologies and artificial intelligence. “Everything happens much, much faster today than it used to,” said the researcher and company boss. “To gain insights, to confirm them, to apply them.”
First cancer drugs as early as 2026?
Şahin has been researching cancer for decades and is a professor of experimental oncology at the Mainz University Medical Center. The company he founded, Biontech , is currently researching almost 30 new cancer therapies and relies in particular on artificial intelligence.
From 2026, Şahin hopes that the first medications will be ready for approval. “We want to have a large portfolio of cancer therapies on the market by 2030,” said the Biontech boss on the occasion of World Cancer Day.