BERLIN (AP) – The scientist who won the race to deliver the first widely used coronavirus vaccine says people can be sure that the vaccines are safe and that the technology behind it will be used soon to fight another global scourge – cancer.
Ozlem Tureci, who founded the German company BioNTech with her husband Ugur Sahin, was working on a way to control the body’s immune system to fight tumors when they learned last year of an unknown virus that infects people in China.
During breakfast, the couple decided to apply the technology they had been researching for two decades to the new threat.
Britain authorized BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine for use in December, followed a week later by the United States. Dozens of other countries followed suit and tens of millions of people around the world received the injection developed in conjunction with the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
“It is worth making bold decisions and trusting that, if you have an extraordinary team, you will be able to solve any problem and obstacle that arises in real time,” Tureci told the Associated Press in an interview.
Among the biggest challenges for the small company based in Mainz were how to conduct large-scale clinical trials in different regions and how to scale the manufacturing process to meet global demand.
Together with Pfizer, the company enlisted the help of Fosun Pharma in China “to obtain assets, capabilities and a geographic footprint on board, which we did not have,” said Tureci.
Among the lessons she and her colleagues have learned is “the importance of cooperation and collaboration internationally”.
Tureci, who was born in Germany, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, said the company had sought medical oversight bodies from the beginning to ensure that the new type of vaccine passed the rigorous scrutiny of regulators.
“The process for approving a drug or vaccine is one in which many questions are asked, many experts are involved and there is an external peer review of all data and scientific discourse,” she said.
Amid a scare in Europe this week over the injection of coronavirus by Swedish-British rival AstraZeneca, Tureci rejected the idea that any corner was cut off by those rushing to develop a vaccine.
“There is a very strict process and the process does not stop after the vaccine is approved,” she said. “It is, in fact, continuing now throughout the world, where regulators have used reporting systems to track and evaluate any observations made with our vaccines or others.”
Tureci and his colleagues received the bullet from BioNTech, she told AP. “Yes, we were vaccinated.”
As BioNTech’s profile grew during the pandemic, so did its value, adding much-needed funds that the company could use to pursue its original goal of developing a new cancer tool.
The vaccine made by BioNTech-Pfizer and its American rival Moderna uses messenger RNA, or mRNA, to carry instructions to the human body to make proteins that prepare it to attack a specific virus. The same principle can be applied to make the immune system fight tumors.
“We have several different cancer vaccines based on mRNA,” said Tureci.
Asked when such therapy could be available, Tureci said, “This is very difficult to predict in innovative development. But we hope that within just a few years, we will also have our (against) cancer vaccines in a place where we can offer them to people ”.
For now, 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, the couple is taking time to receive Germany’s biggest award, the Order of Merit, from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself a trained scientist, will attend the ceremony.
“It is truly an honor,” Tureci said sadly to the award. “Both my husband and I are thrilled.”
But she insisted that developing the vaccine was the work of many.
“This is the effort of many, of our team at BioNTech, of all partners involved, including governments, regulatory authorities, who have worked together with a sense of urgency,” she said. “In our view, it is a recognition of this effort and also a celebration of science”.