BioNTech Brand Guidelines: Mainz 2008, Comirnaty & the CureVac Deal

A research couple and a cancer idea.

BioNTech was founded in Mainz, Germany, in 2008. English Wikipedia says it grew out of research by Uğur Şahin, Özlem Türeci and Christoph Huber, with seed investment from the Munich venture firm MIG Capital, the family office of Andreas and Thomas Strüngmann, and Helmut Jeggle, later chairman of its supervisory board. A Xinhua report carried by The Star on 11 March 2026 also dates the founding to 2008 and says the founders set out to develop mRNA treatments for cancer.

The name is an abbreviation. The company says it stands for Biopharmaceutical New Technologies, and Wikipedia gives the same expansion, with two accepted pronunciations. The capital N and T in the middle of the word mark the “new technologies” half of the name.

The early work was about making mRNA usable as medicine. Wikipedia says Şahin, Türeci and their teams spent years on the molecule’s limited stability in the body, on formulations that deliver it to target cells, and on raising the amount and duration of protein it produces, with the aim of individualised cancer immunotherapies. In 2009 the company acquired EUFETS and JPT Peptide Technologies, and in 2013 the biochemist Katalin Karikó, who later shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, joined as a senior vice president, Wikipedia says.

Partnerships followed from 2015, and the company raised a Series A round in January 2018 and a Series B round, led by Fidelity, in July 2019; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the European Investment Bank also put money in that year, Wikipedia says. In August 2018 BioNTech agreed a multi-year collaboration with Pfizer on mRNA-based influenza vaccines, and on 10 October 2019 its American depositary shares began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker BNTX, Wikipedia says.

Project Lightspeed and a vaccine called Comirnaty.

The company became widely known through the pandemic. Wikipedia says BioNTech started “Project Lightspeed” in January 2020, days after the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus was made public, and in March 2020 partnered with Fosun Pharma for mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau and with Pfizer for most of the rest of the world, keeping exclusive rights in Germany and Turkey. The vaccine that resulted is sold as Comirnaty; Wikipedia calls it the first approved mRNA-based vaccine, and records emergency use authorizations in the United Kingdom and the United States in December 2020, followed by conditional marketing approval in the European Union.

BioNTech used that period to widen its manufacturing and research base. Wikipedia says it introduced the BioNTainer, a modular system for producing mRNA-based medicines in different locations, in February 2022, and inaugurated the first BioNTainer-based site in Kigali, Rwanda, in December 2023, its first facility in Africa. In 2023 it acquired InstaDeep, a British AI company it had worked with since 2019.

Further partnerships and purchases filled out the oncology side. Wikipedia lists a collaboration with the UK government in 2023 on access to personalised mRNA cancer immunotherapies in clinical trials; a plan announced in December 2023 with the Australian state of Victoria for a BioNTainer-based clinical-scale plant in Melbourne; a 2024 collaboration with Triastek, a Chinese company that 3D-prints pharmaceuticals; the purchase of the Chinese biotech Biotheus in December 2024; and, in June 2025, a partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb on the antibody candidate BNT327, also called pumitamig. In January 2026 it announced a life-science seed fund with the University of Pennsylvania.

The company now describes itself as a “global, next generation immunotherapy company,” with oncology candidates including mRNA cancer immunotherapies, immunomodulators, antibody-drug conjugates and CAR-T cell therapies, and says it has in-house manufacturing; we give these as the company’s own description. Wikipedia lists its sites across Germany, in Berlin, Halle, Idar-Oberstein, Marburg and Munich, with others in Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and Africa.

How vaccine makers present themselves.

Vaccine makers sell to health ministries, procurement agencies, hospitals and clinicians long before any patient sees a pack, and their visual language reflects that audience. The imagery tends to stay close to the work itself: gloved hands holding a vial up to the light, rows of filled vials on a stainless line, and researchers in lab coats at a bench or a microscope. The point of these pictures is to show process and care rather than spectacle.

Production is a second recurring subject. Company photographs often show clean production suites, with staff in full gowns, hoods and masks behind glass, and long views of filling lines, bioreactors and freezers. For mRNA companies in particular, the plant itself has become part of the story, and new sites tend to be photographed and announced as milestones in their own right.

A third strand is global health. Vaccine makers frequently show clinics, community health workers and the cold chain: insulated boxes, refrigerated trucks and storage rooms that keep doses within a temperature range on the way to where they are used. Maps, partner logos and the names of public bodies often sit alongside these images, because much of the business runs through governments, international agencies and non-profit funders.

The trade has its own meeting places. Conferences such as the World Vaccine Congress and ESCMID Global, the congress of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, bring companies, researchers and buyers together. In a field where so many pictures show similar vials, gowns and laboratories, a name, a typeface and a single accent colour often do much of the work of telling one company from another.

CureVac, Pfizer and a turn to oncology.

In June 2025 BioNTech announced an all-stock deal to buy CureVac, the Tübingen mRNA company, Wikipedia says. The deal closed on 18 December 2025, Quiver Quantitative reported that day, when about 86.75 per cent of CureVac’s shares had been tendered; BioNTech said it expected to acquire the rest through a compulsory acquisition in January 2026, after which CureVac shares would stop trading.

Other changes followed in 2026. On 10 March 2026 the company announced that Şahin and Türeci would leave by the end of 2026, when their contracts expire, to start a new company focused on next-generation mRNA medicines, the Xinhua report in The Star said; it added that BioNTech’s focus had been shifting back to cancer. Wikipedia, citing Der Spiegel, says that in May 2026 BioNTech announced it would end COVID-19 vaccine production in Germany and transfer manufacturing to Pfizer, closing its sites in Marburg, Idar-Oberstein and Singapore and sites belonging to CureVac.

The parent company is BioNTech SE, headquartered in Mainz, where it was founded. Its 2025 annual report carries the motto “Momentum,” the company says.

For a design guide, BioNTech shows how a short, technical abbreviation can become a widely recognised company name. Compare Pfizer, its partner on Comirnaty, and CureVac, the Tübingen company it bought in 2025. For this guide we use navy, teal and a sandstone with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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