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The German company Biontech wants to apply for the approval of a vaccine against the coronavirus in November. The chances of the remedy are good. But who is behind the billion dollar company?
The good news came at lunchtime: shortly before 1 p.m. Monday, German company Biontech announced that it would apply for expedited approval for a corona vaccine in November. The agent, which Biontech is developing in conjunction with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, is more than 90 percent effective.
This news sparked a stock market euphoria – the company’s shares rose to double digits. The Dax was up six percent. Many stocks rose to their highest level since March. Biontech has finally become the hope of vaccine research, a company that everyone is watching now.
How? And above all: Who are the engines of the company that hardly anyone knew until a year ago?
The founder of Biontech is the son of Turkish guest workers
Biontech is not a classic and well-known pharmaceutical company. It is not based in an American metropolis, but in quiet Mainz. The company’s address is “At Goldgrube 12”, although nothing in the neighborhood looks really glamorous: Biontech shares the street with a bike shop, a post office, and a kebab shop.
Little known until recently were the heads of Biontech, doctors Uğur Şahin, 55, and Özlem Türeci, 53. Şahin’s parents came to Germany from Turkey when he was only four years old. His father worked at Ford in Cologne.
There, at the university clinic, Şahin studied medicine after graduating from high school. As his friends returned home from college and enjoyed their free time, Şahin continued to work in the lab, he said at an award ceremony. According to Şahin, he sometimes stayed in the lab until 4 a.m.
His wife Özlem Türeci, also a doctor, grew up with her grandfather in Istanbul for the first four years and then came to Cloppenburg, where her father worked as a doctor in a small Catholic hospital. Even as a child, Türeci observed appendectomy operations. She once said of herself: “I am a Prussian Turkish woman.”
The two, who meanwhile have a daughter together, met in the cancer ward of the Homburg hospital in Saarland. Şahin worked there as a doctor, Türeci was in the final stages of his medical studies.
They founded the first company 20 years ago.
In 2001, the two moved to Mainz, where they initially worked at the university. But since there was not enough money for their cancer research, they founded their first company with partners and investors: Ganymed Pharmaceuticals.
The company did not get its name from Greek mythology: Ganymed, loved by Zeus, the father of the gods, as “the most beautiful of mortals.” Rather, the name is derived from Turkish. Ganymed represents something like “that for which one has fought hard work.”
The company developed antibodies against cancer cells, the specialty of Şahin and Türeci. In 2016, the two sold the company to Japanese pharmaceutical company Astellas for more than € 400 million.
Biontech has been researching the vaccine since January
Previously, in 2008, Şahin and Türeci co-founded Biontech (spelled “BioNTech”), a company that now has more than 1,000 employees that develops cancer immunotherapies. Şahin became CEO, Türeci heads the clinical development department.
Biontech Headquarters: After the US IPO last year, the company wants to stay in Mainz. (Source: Arne Dedert / dpa)
Here, scientists work mainly with drugs based on so-called mRNA. In short, this means: The body must be used as a “machine” to produce antigens against cancer, a procedure that now appears to be very promising in the fight against Covid-19.
In this way, not only tumors can be treated. The vaccine, which will soon be approved, is also based on this method. When the pandemic broke out, Şahin and Türeci reacted immediately: the couple changed the focus of their investigation and Biontech has been focused on fighting the coronavirus since spring.
50 million cans worldwide, by 2020
The complex with the complicated name “BNT162b2” had been developed by Biontech in the “Lightspeed” project since mid-January. It contains genetic information about the pathogen, from which the body produces a viral protein, in this case the surface protein that the virus uses to enter cells. The goal of vaccination is to stimulate the body to produce antibodies against this protein to intercept viruses before they enter cells and multiply.
The phase 3 study, which is crucial for its approval, began in several countries in late July. More than 43,500 people have received at least one of the two vaccines, which are administered every three weeks. Protection by vaccination should be achieved one week after the second injection.
An advantage of RNA vaccines is that they can be produced much faster than conventional vaccines. Biontech and Pfizer expect to provide up to 50 million doses of vaccines worldwide this year and up to 1.3 billion doses next year.
Şahin is one of the richest Germans
For Şahin, who owns 18 percent of the company, this also has a financial impact. In fall 2019, Biontech went public on the Nasdaq Tech Stock Exchange in the US, and was initially valued at around US $ 3.5 billion. Now, thanks to coronavirus research, Biontech is worth around $ 20 billion. In October, the “Welt am Sonntag” reported that Şahin was among the 100 richest Germans, with assets of 2.4 billion euros.
But that’s not what ahin and Türeci are about, it’s about science. The two still have their cancer patients in mind. “I hope that we will allow risk groups, such as our cancer patients, some of whom no longer dare to go outside, to reconnect with others,” Şahin said recently.
As chairman of the board of Biontech, Şahin is modest. Instead of a limousine, Şahin continues to ride his bicycle. Biontech investor Thomas Strüngmann told “Handelsblatt” that Şahin and Türeci are “exceptional with what they have created for the company in terms of scientific principles and with the passion that is driving it.” They would never have “put monetization first.”
To this day, Şahin researches and teaches as professor of experimental oncology at the university clinic. Türeci also teaches as a private teacher at the University of Mainz. The two teach students who want to become what they once were: medical professionals who put research at the center of their work.
An anecdote is symbolic of this work: on their civil wedding day, they were both still in the laboratory in the morning. And instead of celebrating with family and friends after the wedding, they came back later. The hope of a corona vaccine could come true thanks to this couple.
