Covid-19 vaccine: BioNTech, story of an ascent
The German company BioNTech has developed a vaccine against Covid-19 with an innovative technique in record time.
© AP / Michael Probst
Text by: RFI Follow
6 min
The German biotech company is behind the first vaccine authorized in North America and within the European Union.
This vaccine, developed very quickly, with the help of Pfizer, displays a rate of 95% effectiveness according to a study published in the journal NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine) based on the phase 3 clinical trial. Developed by the American company Moderna, BioNTech's serum uses a technology never before used in a commercial vaccine, based on messenger RNA.
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At the origin of BioNTech, there is a couple of Turkish origin, discreet, but determined;
a scientific couple
and a couple for civil status.
His name is Ugur Sahin, he is 55 years old.
He arrived in Germany very young with his mother, to join his father, a worker at Ford, the automobile company.
Very early on, he developed a passion for science.
He became a doctor and teacher-researcher in immunology and oncology.
Her name is Özlem Türeci, she was born in Germany, and has always been in medicine - her father is a surgeon.
She follows medical studies, and becomes a researcher too.
Look for new drugs
Love of science, just love… they meet at the hospital where they work;
they founded a home, and a first biotechnology company in 2001, to develop drugs against cancer.
“
Both being medical researchers, they weren't really meant to start businesses.
But they were a little frustrated with having very sick patients, whom they could not treat properly from their point of view,
says Steve Pascolo, a researcher at the University Hospital of Zurich in Switzerland, and who worked on a research project with Ugur Sahin, funded by BioNTech
.
They had ideas for new drugs, new antibodies, new ways to help their patients.
They went to pharmaceutical companies, but they weren't interested.
They realized that the only way to get these new treatments to their patients was to do all the preclinical, clinical, and even business work themselves.
These are people who are passionate about science, but who take action for patients.
"
Their first biotech produces monoclonal antibodies against cancer.
It was sold in 2016 (for more than a billion euros).
Messenger RNA technology
However, it's a new approach, based on what's called messenger RNA, that has long been on the couple's mind.
The principle is to give instructions to the organism so that it manufactures itself a particular protein, therapeutic for example;
this is done by administering a strand of RNA (ribonucleic acid) encoding this protein.
In the 1990s, and until the mid-2000s, the approach aroused skepticism, in particular because RNA posed thorny problems.
“
We were then ignored, even despised by the scientific and medical community, which thought that we could not make vaccines with messenger RNA, because this molecule is too ephemeral to be considered at the time as a vector of vaccination (it degrades very quickly in the organism editor's note)
", explains Steve Pascolo, who carried out research in 1998 on therapeutic vaccines against cancer based on messenger RNA, at the University of Tübingen in Germany, then from 2000 within CureVac, a German biotech that he co-founded (he left it a few years later).
“
But we knew that it could work and that we had to continue research.
This science was developed mainly thanks to private investors.
They had more noses than the academic world
”.
No one in science makes a discovery on their own
But going from the principle to a possible medical application takes time, and the outcome remained uncertain for a long time.
Over the years, progress, large or small, is made by researchers, in the academic sector or in private laboratories.
The approach turns into technology.
The biotechnology company BioNTech, which Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci created in 2008, will help refine it, to develop and test individualized cancer vaccines (they are still in the clinical trial phase).
“
No one in science makes a discovery completely on their own, or develops a technology on their own.
This is done in stages,
”recalls Professor Jean-Daniel Lelièvre, vaccination specialist and head of the infectious diseases department at Henri Mondor hospital in Créteil, in the Paris region.
“
Obviously, whoever arrives at the end of the chain benefits from all the previous stages.
But BioNTech has been working on this technology for a long time, they have made improvements on vaccine approaches with messenger RNAs
”.
The work of BioNTech will have a somewhat unexpected application.
From cancer to the new coronavirus
When the new coronavirus was identified a year ago, Ugur Sahin very quickly understood the danger of the virus.
Part of the activities of the company of 1,500 employees are redirected to develop a vaccine based on messenger RNA.
In this case, the principle is to inject an RNA fragment of the coronavirus intramuscularly.
The cells are thus given instructions for making a virus protein themselves.
The immune system then kicks in, and the defenses will be there in case of infection.
Through its cancer research, BioNTech has mastered messenger RNA technology - a technology that is quick to implement.
It also signs an agreement with the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
Result: in less than a year,
a vaccine, with a new concept
, arrives on the market.
Now, BioNTech is worth several billion on the stock market.
The company, hitherto unknown to the general public, has gone from shadows to light.
But if the coronavirus vaccine keeps its promises, it could be the first major success of messenger RNA technology, which many scientists have turned to for ten years;
some see it as the next medical revolution, which could cure or prevent many diseases.
►Also listen: French press review - Covid-19, a disease with still mysterious origins
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