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They created the first Covid-19 vaccine, 11 months after the pandemic began. Dr Ugur Şahin, CEO of BioNTech, and his wife, Dr Özlem Türeci, its co-founder and chief medical officer, were voted by Daily Maverick’s readers as its International People of the Year.
Their continuing fight against cancer and the research into the next generation immunotherapy to cure it brought a Covid-19 breakthrough moment. It was a true marriage of years of scientific endeavour and like-minded personalities that led Ugur Şahin (56) and Özlem Türeci (54) on to this path.
Both scientists are the children of Turkish migrants who moved to Germany in the late 1960s. The couple met when Şahin was working at the Saarland University Hospital and Türeci was completing her final year of medical studies.
More than 30 years ago, they were already interested in cancer treatment and immunology, which was eventually the path to the successful Covid-19 vaccine.
“Patient care and science” were important to both and they were “haunted by the same dilemma that there was not much we could offer to our cancer patients… One of our shared missions was to bring science and technology fast to the patients – fast is the important…
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