Get to know the Founders of BioNTech
Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci are the Turkish-German married Muslim couple who co-founded BioNTech, one of the two companies behind the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that achieved over 90% success in the earlier analysis.
On Monday, November 10th, 2020, a collaboration of biotechnology company BioNTech and global pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that they had achieved success of over 90% effectiveness in the first interim efficacy analysis for an mRNA based vaccine candidate BNT162b2. The vaccine would be administered in two doses, with the second being injected two weeks after the first, and that it would give full protection against the coronavirus in the span of 28 days. But who are the people behind the success of this vaccine and what do we know about them? Read on to learn more.
BioNTech was co-founded by Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, a Muslim couple with Turkish-German background. Professor Sahin is the CEO of the company at the age of 55 while his spouse Dr. Tureci is the Chief Medical Officer of the 12 year old company at the age of 53. The two are amongst Germany’s hundred richest people with BioNTech valued at $21 billion since the vaccine breakthrough.
Sahin is a professor of oncology at the University of Mainz, Germany, the co-founder of Ganymed Pharmaceuticals with Tureci (developers of cancer immunotherapies), and a recipient of the biennial Iranian prize for Muslims in science and tech, the Mustafa Prize in 2019.
Tureci is a pioneer in cancer immunotherapy, physician, immunologist, and businessperson with credentials including being the President of the non-profit Association for Cancer Immunotherapy (CIMT), Co-Initiator and Chair of the Rhine-Main non-profit Cluster for Individualized Immune Intervention (Ci3), the co-founder and CEO of the Ganymed Pharmaceuticals, and a Lecturer at the University of Mainz, Germany.
Here’s to hoping that this vaccine pulls through and that things begin to improve in regards to controlling the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Credit: Stefan F. Sammer/Imago Images
