Just a year ago, Özlem Türeci and Ugur Sahin were still unknown names in the world of Big Pharma. Having founded their small biotech company under the name BioNTech only in 2008, the couple’s work has focused primarily on cancer research.
But due to the devastating coronavirus pandemic and the BioNTech project called “Lightspeed” launched in mid-January 2020, the team of husbands and wives has formerly become a very present group around the world to develop the first vaccine against COVID-19, the disease caused by an infection. with the virus. Its shot, produced with the American partner Pfizer, has been shown to be more than 90% effective in creating immunity against the original virus and apparently also against its British and South African variants.
Therefore, it can be rightly said that the CEO of BioNTech, Ugur Sahin, and its medical director, Özlem Türeci, save the lives of millions of people around the world.
Germany’s highest honors
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier presented the Cross of the Commander of the Federal Order of Merit to both
Türeci and Sahin on Friday. They are honored to make “a decisive contribution to the containment of the coronavirus pandemic,” the German president said.
The Knight’s Commander’s Cross belongs to the second of the four subclasses of the Order of Merit of Germany
The Knight’s Commander’s Cross is part of a group of decorations called the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Order was created in 1951 by the first post-war German president, Theodor Heuss, and has since been awarded to more than 260,000 people. It comprises four groups, with eight regular classes and one special class, and aims to “visibly express recognition and gratitude to deserving men and women of the German people and of foreign countries.”
Among those awarded the highest honors given by Germany are prominent foreigners such as British Queen Elizabeth II and former United States President George W. Bush, as well as famous German figures such as former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The director of the dance company Pina Bausch, the comedian Vicco von Bülow and a large number of Germans from all walks of life have also been honored for their service in Germany.
Changing approach to saving the world
According to the German president, the couple is also receiving the cross for their “innovative and world-renowned research” in the field of mRNA technology. New gene therapy in vaccine development uses a small portion of the virus’s genetic information to elicit an immune response by producing proteins directly in the human cell.
Prior to their research on COVID-19, Sahin and Türeci were already trying to harness the human body’s ability to defend itself against bacteria and viruses. They tried to fight cancer with immunotherapy that stimulates self-healing mechanisms and triggers the body’s own “internal police force” to make malignant tumors harmless.
Sahin and Türeci’s background in mRNA research allowed them to develop the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine in an unusually short period of less than a year, making it the first shot against COVID-19. available worldwide, after emergency approval in the United States. November 2020.
In December, Sahin told DW that he did not see himself as a new “superhero” in vaccine research. “We were only able to do it because we have a fantastic team. A team of international scientists and staff from 60 different countries who have been working with us for years on this issue [mRNA research], “He said.
Sahin sees himself as an immune engineer trying to use the body’s antiviral mechanisms to treat cancer
A lifelong passion
Aside from the couple’s meteoric rise to scientific stardom, little is known about Sahin and Türeci’s private lives.
Born in Turkey, Ugur Sahin was four years old when he and his mother moved to Cologne, Germany, to join his father, who worked for the Ford Company. After graduating from high school, he studied medicine at Cologne University. “I was interested in immunotherapy,” said Sahin, 54. He added that he was interested in how the immune system works and how he could be trained to identify and attack cancer cells.
In 1992, Sahin graduated from medical school and worked as a doctor of internal medicine and hematology and oncology at the University of Cologne for several years before moving to the Medical Center of the University of Saarland. There he met Türeci, a medical student and daughter of a doctor who had come to Germany from Istanbul.
For BioNTech medical director Özlem Türeci, patient-centered care is what matters most
Professor at the University of Mainz, Özlem Türeci is considered a pioneer in cancer immunotherapy. “Influenced by my father, who worked as a doctor, I couldn’t imagine any other profession even when I was a little girl,” Türeci told the online website wissenschaftsjahr.de. “My father’s practice was in the family home. When we were kids, we played between patients. There was no strict separation between work and life in our home.”
Like his father, he wanted to help people. At first, she thought about becoming a nun, she told the German magazine Impulse in 2011, but then decided to pursue medicine.
Türeci and Sahin were married in 2002, when he was already working at the University Medical Center in Mainz. Even on their wedding day, Sahin spent some time in the lab, both before the couple went to the registration office and again after.
BioNTech recently opened a new factory in Marburg, which hopes to increase vaccine production by 750 million doses a year
BioNTech Foundation
In 2001, the couple launched the biopharmaceutical company Ganymed Pharmaceuticals to develop immunotherapeutic drugs against cancer. They sold the firm in 2016 for 422 million euros ($ 502 million).
In 2008, Sahin and Türeci founded BioNTech, a company that develops mostly technologies and drugs for individualized immunotherapies against cancer, none of which have yet reached the approval phase. Currently, more than 1,300 people from more than 60 countries work at BioNTech and more than half of them are women.
Andreas Kuhn, senior vice president of BioNimics and RNA Manufacturing at BioNTech, said he had rarely found someone as smart as Sahin, who is always “one step ahead of other people.”
“If you have a new idea, you’ve already reached that stage and you had anticipated it,” Kuhn told the audience during the 2019 Mustafa Awards ceremony. “I think it’s one of his strengths that can excite people for a cause “.
There is no financial reward for being honored with the Order of Merit of Germany. But years of research are bearing fruit in Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci. Sahin owns 18% of BioNTech shares listed on the New York Nasdaq Stock Exchange. After successfully launching the vaccine, the couple has suddenly found themselves among the 100 richest Germans, at least on paper.