BERLIN (AP) – The scientist who won the race to deliver the first widely used coronavirus vaccine says people can be sure the fires are safe and the technology behind it will soon be used to fight another global scourge – cancer.
Ozlem Tureci, who co-founded the German company BioNTech with her husband, was working on a way to boost the body’s immune system to fight tumors when they learned last year about an unknown virus that infects people in China.
At breakfast, the couple decided to apply the technology they had been researching for two decades to the new threat, calling the effort “Project Lightspeed.”
Within 11 months, the United Kingdom authorized the use of the BioNTech mRNA vaccine developed in conjunction with the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, followed a week later by the United States. Tens of millions of people around the world have been shot since December.
“It’s worth making bold decisions and trusting that if you have a great team, you’ll be able to solve any problems and obstacles that come your way in real time,” Tureci told the Associated Press in an interview.
Among the biggest challenges for the small company in Mainz, which has not yet launched a product, was how to conduct large-scale clinical trials in different regions and how to increase the manufacturing process to meet global demand.
Together with Pfizer, the company requested the help of Fosun Pharma in China “to obtain assets, capabilities and geographical footprint on board, which we did not have,” Tureci said.
Among the lessons she and her husband, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin learned with their colleagues, was “how important international cooperation and collaboration are.”
Tureci, who was born in Germany to Turkish immigrants, said the company, which has staff members from 60 countries, has contacted medical surveillance bodies from the outset to make sure the new type of vaccine will go through control. rigorous regulation.
“The process of obtaining an approved drug or vaccine is one in which many questions are asked, many experts are involved, and there is an external evaluation of all data and scientific discourse,” she said.
Amid a scare in Europe this week over the coronavirus shot fired by British-Swedish rival AstraZeneca, Tureci rejected the idea that any corners would have been cut by those vying to develop a vaccine.
“There is a very rigid process and the process does not stop after a vaccine is approved,” she said. “In fact, it now continues around the world, where regulators have used reporting systems to examine and evaluate any observations made with our vaccines or other vaccines.”
Turks and her colleagues received the BioNTech vaccine themselves, she told AP. “Yes, we were vaccinated,” she said.
As BioNTech’s profile grew during the pandemic, so did its value, providing funds that the company can use to pursue its original goal of developing a new anti-cancer tool.
Vaccines produced by BioNTech-Pfizer and rival USA Moderna uses messenger RNA or mRNA to carry instructions into the human body to make the proteins that receive it to attack a specific virus. The same principle can be applied for the immune system to consider tumors.
“We have several different mRNA-based cancer vaccines,” said Tureci, who is BioNTech’s chief physician.
Asked when such therapy might be available, Tureci said that “it is very difficult to predict in innovative development. But we expect that in just a few years, we will have (cancer) vaccines in a place where we can offer them to people. ”
For the time being, Tureci and Sahin are trying to ensure that the vaccines that governments have ordered are delivered and that the vaccines respond effectively to any new mutations in the virus.
On Friday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier presented his wife and husband with one of the country’s highest decorations, the Order of Merit, in a ceremony attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel, a trained scientist herself.
“You started with a drug to treat cancer in one person,” Steinmeier told the couple. “And today we have a vaccine for all mankind.”
Tureci said before the ceremony that obtaining the award was “really an honor”.
But he insisted that the development of the vaccine was the work of many.
“It’s about the effort of many: our BioNTech team, all the partners involved, also governments, regulators, who worked together with a sense of urgency,” Tureci said. “As we see it, this is a recognition of this effort and also a celebration of science.”
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