Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine: Know power couple behind never-before-approved research

The ‘dream team’ behind the world’s first efficient COVID-19 vaccine that has provided the major breakthrough in global research, is a Turkish-German ‘power’ couple of scientists Ugur Sahin (55) and Ozlem Tureci (53). While the entire world is struggling to control the COVID-19 pandemic and the infection rate has continued to surge in several nations, it was the pioneering research in the field of modified genetic code that has brought the public attention to them, as the brains behind the vaccine that has shown 90% efficacy. 

While the news of Pfizer-BioNTech’s mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine being efficient has caused a stir in the world of medical research, it also significantly catapulted economies across the globe. This too, at a time when more than a million people have died due to the highly-infectious disease and every country is battling to flatten the graph of new infections. Sahin and Tureci are being credited for the world breathing a sigh of relief with the November 9 announcement of promising results in phase 3 trials of the vaccine candidate.

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Who is the power couple?

As per reports, Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci set up BioNTech in the central German city of Mainz in 2008 which also partnered with American pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc to develop the COVID-19 vaccine candidate by using a never-before-approved technology called messenger RNA or mRNA. Sahin is also the chief executive of BioNTech where Tureci is the chief medical officer and as per Guardian report, he is known for cycling around the headquarters of the company which is currently valued at $21.9 billion.

Following the announcement by Pfizer, Sahin reportedly called the positive results of the important trial as the “victory for innovation, science and of a global collaborative effort” that would contribute for the world to “regain a sense of normalcy.” Sahin and Tureci’s company managed to outperform major, well-established competitors in the global race for the COVID-19 vaccine and it also reportedly made them the first Germans with Turkish roots to be a part of nation’s rich list in autumn.

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Children of migrants

Sahin and Tureci are the children of Turkish migrants who had moved to Germany in the late 1960s. As per media reports, Sahin was born in Iskenderun on the Mediterranean coast but came to Germany when he was a four-year-old. His father worked at a Ford factory in Cologne. Meanwhile, BioNTech’s chief medical officer grew up in Lastrup, Lower Saxony, the place where her Istanbul-born father was a surgeon at a Catholic hospital. Eventually, they met at Saarland University. Since 2001, the couple has been based in Mainz and married in 2002. 

Both of them grew up in cross-pollinating cultures that reportedly gave them a dynamic childhood. Years down the lane, now both of them are being widely hailed for the research that was much-needed by the world.

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