Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of the German biotechnology company BioNTech. (FILE)
Frankfurt:
Positive data on the COVID-19 vaccine from BioNTech and its U.S. partner Pfizer Inc is an unlikely success for the married couple behind the German biotech company, who have dedicated their lives to harnessing the immune system against cancer. over 90% effective at preventing COVID-19 based on initial data from a large study.
Pfizer and BioNTech are the first drugmakers to present successful data from a large-scale clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine. The companies said they had so far found no serious safety concerns and expected to apply for emergency use authorization in the United States later this month.
From humble roots as the son of a Turkish immigrant working at a Ford factory in Cologne, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin, 55, is now among the 100 richest Germans, along with his wife and colleague Oezlem Tuereci, 53, according to the weekly. Welt am Sonntag.
The market value of Nasdaq-listed BioNTech, which the pair co-founded, had climbed to $ 21 billion at Friday’s close from $ 4.6 billion a year ago, with the company poised to play a major role in mass vaccination against the coronavirus.
“Despite his accomplishments, he has never changed from being incredibly humble and personal,” said Matthias Kromayer, board member of venture capital firm MIG AG, whose funds have supported BioNTech since its inception in 2008.
He added that Sahin usually goes to business meetings wearing jeans and carrying his bike helmet and backpack with him.
Stubbornly pursuing his childhood dream of studying medicine and becoming a doctor, Sahin worked in university hospitals in Cologne and in the south-western city of Homburg, where he met Tuereci early in his academic career.
Medical research and oncology have become a common passion.
Tuereci, the daughter of a Turkish doctor who had emigrated to Germany, said in a media interview that even on their wedding day, the two made time to work in the laboratory.
Together, they looked at the immune system as a potential ally in the fight against cancer and attempted to tackle the unique genetic makeup of each tumor.
The life of entrepreneurs began in 2001 when they created Ganymed Pharmaceuticals to develop anti-cancer antibodies, but Sahin – then a professor at the University of Mainz – never gave up on university research and teaching.
They secured funding from MIG AG as well as Thomas and Andreas Struengmann, who sold their Hexal generics business to Novartis in 2005.
This business was sold to Astellas in Japan in 2016 for $ 1.4 billion. At that time, the team behind Ganymed was already busy building BioNTech, founded in 2008, to develop a much broader range of cancer immunotherapy tools.
This included mRNA, a versatile messenger substance for sending genetic instructions into cells.
DREAM TEAM
For MIG’s Kromayer, Tuereci and Sahin are a “dream team” in that they have reconciled their visions with the constraints of reality.
BioNTech’s story took a turn when Sahin stumbled upon a scientific paper in January on a new coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan and it struck him how small the pitch was between anti-mRNA drugs. anticancer and viral mRNA vaccines.
BioNTech quickly assigned around 500 employees to the “Speed of Light” project to work on several possible compounds, winning pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and Chinese manufacturer Fosun as partners in March.
Matthias Theobald, professor of oncology at the University of Mainz who has worked with Sahin for 20 years, said his tendency to underestimate a relentless ambition to turn medicine, exemplified by the leap of faith into a vaccine COVID-19.
“He is a very modest and humble person. Appearances do not matter to him. But he wants to create the structures that allow him to realize his visions and this is where the aspirations are far from modest,” said Theobald.
Sahin told Reuters on Monday that the reading represented an “extraordinary success rate” but that he did not know earlier in the year how difficult the task would be overall.
“It’s certainly not something you could easily articulate as a serious scientist, but it was within the realms of possibility from the start.”
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
