With around 1,500 registered chemistry students, JGU occupies a top position in said field in Germany and attaches great importance to transparent and innovative scientific work.

As part of the consortium, the group lead by Prof. Till Opatz at JGU is working on three questions. The international team is working on the synthesis of new lipids and other auxiliary substances that can be used to efficiently introduce mRNA into cells. In addition, the RNA must be made available within the cell in such a way that it can be translated into proteins without the nucleic acid being broken down or expelled.

Regardless of the specific cooperation in KmR, in which the University of Leipzig, Lipoid GmbH and two Fraunhofer Institutes in Mainz and Potsdam are involved as well, the JGU has a long history of cooperation with BioNTech, which is also reflected in scientific projects such as the Collaborative Research Center 1066 of the German Research Foundation. “We are pleased about this extremely exciting joint research project that is relevant to many medical questions,” says Prof. Opatz. “Research on biomedically relevant questions is the best motivation.”