The Brains Behind The Breakthrough

The husband-and-wife duo behind Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine say they felt it was their duty to find a solution

- Nici De Wet

A Couple meets as university students, bond over a shared passion for science, get married and devote their lives to developing drugs to fight diseases that blight humankind.

Then a deadly pandemic comes along and wipes out close to 1,5 million people in a few harrowing months. The couple works around the clock to come up with a vaccine to help liberate the globe from the grip of the killer virus – and they do just that.

It may sound more like something from a Hollywood movie but this is the real-life story of scientists Dr. Ugur Sahin (55) and Dr. Özlem Türeci (53), the dream team behind one of the vaccines that could halt the relentless march of Covid-19.

The husband and wife head up the German biotech company BioNTech, which has developed a vaccine in conjunction with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

As parts of the world prepare to start rolling out doses of the eagerly anticipated vaccine, the couple, who both hail from Turkish immigrant families, remain characteristically modest about their success.

“The trial results were above all a victory for innovation, science, and of a global collaborative effort. It might hopefully help the world regain a sense of normalcy,” says Ugur, who co-founded BioNTech in 2008 with his wife, who’s the company’s chief medical officer.

The pair are well known in medical and scientific circles for their expertise, unrelenting work ethic, and entrepreneurial zeal.

In fact, when Ugur first read about Covid-19 and its potential impact on the global population in a medical journal in January, he knew he had to jump on it fast.