“Founders’ Prize underscores importance of innovation and science”

Togeth­er with their team, Pro­fes­sor Dr. Uğur Şahin, CEO and co-founder of BioN­Tech, and Dr. Özlem Türe­ci, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer and also co-founder, have pro­vid­ed an unspeak­ably great ser­vice to hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple in a vast­ly changed world. The co-founders of the Mainz-based bio­phar­ma com­pa­ny and their team made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the con­tain­ment of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic by devel­op­ing the first mRNA-based COVID-19 vac­cine. For this achieve­ment, the part­ners of the Ger­man Founders’ Prize — stern, Sparkassen, ZDF and Porsche — award­ed the two researchers and co-founders, as well as their entire team, the Spe­cial Prize of the Ger­man Founders’ Prize on Tues­day [Sept. 14, 2021] in the ZDF cap­i­tal city studio.

As part of this year’s Ger­man Founders Award cer­e­mo­ny, the co-founders con­duct­ed a short inter­view with pre­sen­ter Bar­bara Hahlweg via video feed to the ZDF cap­i­tal stu­dio for the award acceptance.

“We are par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased about the Ger­man Founders’ Prize because it under­scores how impor­tant inno­va­tion and sci­ence are in achiev­ing noble goals — in this case, in help­ing to stem the Coro­na pan­dem­ic. In addi­tion, the award empha­sizes the impor­tance of spir­it­ed and con­sis­tent entrepreneurship.”

- Dr. Özlem Türeci

Address­ing the vision for start­ing his own busi­ness, Pro­fes­sor Dr. Uğur Şahin said, “While we were work­ing as doc­tors, we found that we could not help patients with the avail­able resources as well as sci­ence could make it pos­si­ble. We were look­ing for a way to bring our sci­en­tif­ic ideas to patients. It became appar­ent that this would not be pos­si­ble in a pure­ly aca­d­e­m­ic set­ting. We decid­ed to incor­po­rate to be able to real­ize our vision.”

Before found­ing the com­pa­ny in 2008, the pair of researchers had found­ed Ganymed Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, a bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny, to devel­op new anti­body-based can­cer ther­a­pies. In 2016, Sahin and Türe­ci sold their first Uni­corn to Japan­ese phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Astel­las. The group also ini­tial­ly focused on can­cer research, based on four com­ple­men­tary drug class­es. The com­pa­ny’s pro­pri­etary mRNA tech­nol­o­gy is the most advanced of the four class­es. The goal was and is to devel­op inno­v­a­tive indi­vid­u­al­ized ther­a­pies for peo­ple with can­cer. Mean­while, the com­pa­ny is also research­ing vac­cines and ther­a­pies in the field of infec­tious dis­eases and autoim­mune diseases.

At the first signs of an emerg­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, BioN­Tech decid­ed to do its part by devel­op­ing a vac­cine based on the com­pa­ny’s pro­pri­etary mRNA tech­nol­o­gy, and with­in a very short peri­od of time, raised resources for this endeav­or, which was lat­er named “Project Light­speed”. In less than a year, the Group worked with U.S. phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Pfiz­er to devel­op an effec­tive and well-tol­er­at­ed COVID-19 vac­cine and make it avail­able to peo­ple world­wide. The vac­cine was the first mRNA-based vac­cine ever approved for the mar­ket — the birth of a new class of drugs. The world-renowned vac­cine has now been admin­is­tered hun­dreds of mil­lions of times. A total of 3 bil­lion dos­es are expect­ed to be pro­duced by the end of the year, and 1.4 bil­lion have already been deliv­ered to more than 100 coun­tries and regions around the world. This will pro­tect more than 15 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion from con­tract­ing COVID-19. The suc­cess of the vac­cine allows BioN­Tech to accel­er­ate addi­tion­al pro­grams. In August, the com­pa­ny announced it was devel­op­ing an mRNA-based vac­cine against malar­ia — a dis­ease that killed near­ly 400,000 thou­sand peo­ple in 2019, accord­ing to WHO.

Before the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the com­pa­ny was known only among experts. The com­pa­ny is now high­ly trad­ed on the stock mar­ket — in August, its mar­ket val­ue cracked the $100 bil­lion mark. The Mainz-based com­pa­ny now employs more than 2,500 peo­ple world­wide, with offices in sev­er­al Ger­man cities, the Unit­ed States, the Unit­ed King­dom and soon Sin­ga­pore. In addi­tion, BioN­Tech is invest­ing in the expan­sion of its own pro­duc­tion net­work. The goal is not only to build region­al and glob­al capac­i­ties for the grow­ing pipeline of prod­uct can­di­dates, but also, in par­tic­u­lar, to con­tribute to the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of med­i­cine and health­care. In addi­tion to an mRNA pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Sin­ga­pore for the South­east Asia region, the com­pa­ny also plans to build pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty on the African continent.

The part­ner rep­re­sen­ta­tives of stern, Sparkassen, ZDF and Porsche hon­ored the exper­tise, com­mit­ment, as well as the unbri­dled research dri­ve with which Dr. Özlem Türe­ci and Pro­fes­sor Dr. Uğur Şahin and their team have imple­ment­ed their goal of devel­op­ing an effec­tive and well-tol­er­at­ed COVID-19 vac­cine as quick­ly as pos­si­ble with the spe­cial award of the Ger­man Founders’ Prize. In addi­tion to the research work, he said, an equal­ly great achieve­ment was to net­work investors, com­pa­nies as part­ners, sup­pli­ers and pro­duc­ers in such a way that pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of the vac­cine are also pos­si­ble quick­ly, effec­tive­ly and safe­ly. The spe­cial prize of the Ger­man Founders’ Award is award­ed to the two co-founders and their entire team because they show what sci­ence and inno­va­tion can achieve.