The small German biotech company BioNTech, founded by a husband and wife team with Turkish roots, has never brought a vaccine onto the market before. But its experimental technology has now become the first licensed for use in the Western world to help end the coronavirus
pandemic.
Together with its US partner Pfizer, BioNTech said Wednesday that its COVID-19 Britain has granted approval for the vaccine, and its launch is scheduled for next week.
Cancer pioneer
BioNTech, based in Mainz, was co-founded in 2008 by Ugur Sahin and his wife Ozlem Tureci, both scientists and children of Turkish immigrants to Germany, as well as Austrian cancer expert Christoph Huber.
In normal times, BioNTech and its approximately 1,500 employees are focused on developing specialized immunotherapies for cancer patients based on “messenger RNA” (mRNA) molecules that trigger the construction of proteins in cells to stimulate the immune system.
It is this same technology, which has the advantage that it can be developed more quickly than traditional vaccines, that is at the heart of your COVID-19 Shooting.
The vaccine will introduce synthetic mRNA into the human body to trick the immune system into producing the viral proteins necessary for a safe but strong offensive against the coronavirus.
Early on the starting blocks
Sahin, 54, sprang into action in January shortly after reading about the rise of a deadly new coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
By the time much of the planet was on lockdown in March, BioNTech had developed 20 vaccine candidates based on mRNA technology, he told Der Spiegel weekly.
Those were ultimately narrowed down to a handful of the most promising options, with the BNT162b2 vaccine now leading the way.
Teaming up with Pfizer
Having reached an agreement with the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to work together on the development of mRNA-based influenza vaccines in 2018 coronavirus The vaccine was the obvious next step for BioNTech.
The two companies announced in March that they were aiming to jointly develop a COVID-19 jab, “matching Pfizer’s development, regulatory and commercial capabilities with BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine technology and expertise,” they said at the time.
While world headlines tend to lead with Pfizer’s involvement, Sahin insisted to Spiegel: “It’s our technology.”
The cooperation fits well because it allows BioNTech “to develop and distribute a possible vaccine in the shortest possible time,” he added.
Global launch
The BNT162b2 vaccine will require two injections to be effective.
BioNTech and Pfizer have said they expect to supply up to 50 million doses of vaccines worldwide in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion in 2021.
In a clear sign that they were preparing for mass production, BioNTech purchased a manufacturing site in Marburg, western Germany, in September from the Swiss pharmaceutical group Novartis, along with its 300 employees, allowing it to produce millions of additional doses each year.
BioNTech already has two other production sites in Germany, while at least four Pfizer sites in the United States and Europe will join the unprecedented effort to launch a vaccine at record speed.
Sahin had told AFP in an interview in November that if all the actors involved – governments, pharmaceutical companies and vaccine logistics firms – “do a very good job,” then “we can get 60 to 70 percent vaccinated. of the population in the fall of 2021. “
“And when we do, we could have a normal winter. With no other closure.”
In addition to Britain, the European Union and a host of countries, including the US and Japan, have already placed orders for millions of doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine as nations eagerly await regulatory approvals.
BioNTech has also reached an agreement with the Shanghai-based Fosun Pharmaceutical Group, which will have the exclusive rights to bring the vaccine to China.
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