THE COUPLE WHO HELPED SAVE THE WORLD

Not only did they create a COVID-19 vaccine and team up with Pfizer to save countless lives, they are also a shining example of integration

- David Gelles

BioNTech co-founders Dr Ugur Sahin and Dr Özlem Türeci at the company's headquarters in Mainz, Germany

THREE YEARS AGO, Dr. Ugur Sahin took the stage at a conference in Berlin and made a bold prediction. Speaking to a roomful of infectious disease experts, he said his company might be able to use its so-called messenger RNA technology to rapidly develop a vaccine in the event of a pandemic.

At the time, Dr. Sahin and his company, BioNTech, were little known outside the small world of European biotechnology start-ups. BioNTech, which Dr. Sahin cofounded with his wife, Dr. Özlem Türeci, and Austrian oncologist Professor Christoph Huber, was mostly focused on cancer treatments. It had never brought a product to market. COVID-19 did not yet exist. But his words proved prophetic.

Two years later, on November 9, 2020, BioNTech and US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that a coronavirus vaccine developed by Dr. Sahin and his team was more than 90 per cent effective in preventing the disease among trial volunteers who had no evidence of having previously been infected. The stunning results vaulted BioNTech and Pfizer to the front of the race to find a cure for a disease that has killed more than 4.2 million people worldwide.

“We believe it is the start of the end of the COVID era,” Dr. Sahin said in an interview at the time.