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- A German couple is one of the driving forces behind Pfizer’s landmark coronavirus vaccine.
- Dr. Ugur Sahin is the CEO and Dr. Özlem Türeci the Medical Director of BioNTech, the company that created the vaccine in partnership with Pfizer.
- The pair crossed the threshold of billionaires in June, when BioNTech shares rose on news of its deal with Pfizer, and a recent surge in positive news about vaccines has made them worth nearly $ 4 billion.
- The duo met while working at a university hospital in southwestern Germany; they co-founded their first pharmaceutical company a year before they got married.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
Pfizer has made history with the results of its end-stage coronavirus vaccine. The vaccine, developed with German partner BioNTech, is more than 90% effective, according to early data from clinical trials.
It is the fastest vaccine ever developed, and its efficacy was much higher than virologists expected of 70% or 80%.
That is good news for the future of the pandemic and for the German couple behind it.
BioNTech CEO Dr. Ugur Sahin co-founded the firm with his wife, Dr. Özlem Türeci, who is medical director. The pair crossed the billionaire threshold in June, when BioNTech shares surged after their deal with Pfizer was announced. Another share surge after the first test data could see their joint fortune soar to nearly $ 4 billion.
“It could be the beginning of the end of the Covid era,” Dr. Sahin told the New York Times.
Here’s how the vaccine power couple met and left their mark on modern medicine.
read more: How Pharma giant Pfizer partnered with little-known biotechnology to develop an effective coronavirus vaccine in record time
