German Vaccine Leader Began With Wild Cancer Research Idea
- BioNTech’s husband-wife team partnered with Pfizer on shot
- Preliminary results show vaccine blocks 90% of Covid cases
The experimental vaccine BioNTech developed with Pfizer delivered preliminary results from a study showing it blocked more than 90% of Covid-19 cases.
Photographer: Dogukan Keskinkilic/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
BioNTech SE’s path toward a successful Covid-19 vaccine started more than a quarter-century ago with a pair of German doctors and an idea: harnessing the immune system to attack not viruses, but cancer cells.
The concept was initially seen as crazy, Chief Medical Officer Ozlem Tureci recalled nearly two years ago. But she and her husband, BioNTech Chief Executive Officer Ugur Sahin, persisted. They persuaded a pair of billionaire twin brothers to invest and built a team of scientists, including other early leaders in the field of messenger RNA vaccines.