The Turkish family that created the coronavirus vaccine

The US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German company Biontech announced that this month they will apply for the license of their vaccine against the new coronavirus, which has shown an efficiency of more than 90%. Developing a vaccine usually takes eight to ten years, but scientists at Biontech based in the German city of Mainz have been able to achieve it in less than a year.

Behind Biontech are spouses Ugur Shahin and Yozlem Tureci. Back in January, when hardly anyone in Europe was concerned about the coronavirus, the two scientists turned their attention to developing a vaccine. Three months later, the drug has already undergone clinical trials.

The story of Ugur Shahin and Yozlem Tureci

“I realized very early that he was interested in science,” said 54-year-old Ugur Shahin. He was born in Turkey, but at the age of 4 he arrived with his mother in Cologne, where his father already works in the Ford factories. Shahin graduated in medicine from the University of Cologne. When he was 20 years old, he started working in a laboratory. “When our last conference ended at 4 in the afternoon, my colleagues would go home and I would go to the laboratory, where I worked late into the night, sometimes until 4 in the morning,” Shahin recalls.

In 1992, Shahin defended his doctorate, after which he began practicing as a doctor of internal medicine and oncology at the Cologne University Clinic. He later got a job at the Saarland University Clinic, where he met his future wife, Ozlem Tureci.

Tureci is the daughter of a Turkish doctor who emigrated from Istanbul to Germany. Today, she is considered a pioneer in the field of cancer immunotherapy. “Influenced by my father, who worked as a doctor, as a child I simply could not imagine another profession,” explains Tureci and says: “My father’s office was in our house and that way as children we played with patients. Even at home. my parents didn’t have a strict division between work and personal life. “

The way to success

When the two doctors were married in 2002, Sahin was already working at the Mainz University Clinic. Even on her wedding day, Shahin spends time before and after the signing not elsewhere, but in the lab.

In 2001, the two founded the biopharmaceutical company Ganymed Pharmaceuticals, which develops immunotherapeutic drugs against cancer. In 2016 it was sold for more than 420 million euros. And in 2008 they were among the co-founders of Biontech. The company works mainly on technologies and drugs for immunotherapy of cancer patients. So far, however, no products from the company have received approval to enter the market.

“I have never met such an intelligent man.”

At Biontech, Ozlem Tureci is responsible for clinical research and continues to teach at the University of Mainz. Her husband, Ugur Shahin, is a director of the Biontech board of directors and also teaches at the University of Mainz. Andreas Kuhn, one of Shahin’s associates, said of him: “I have rarely met such an intelligent man. He is always one step ahead of the rest.”

Today, Biontech employs more than 1,300 people from more than 60 countries, more than half of whom are women. In October, the company went public, and Ugur Shahin, who owns 18 percent of Biontech’s shares, is already among the 100 richest Germans, at least in theory.