New York Post, Sunday, November 15, 2020
nypost.com
outbreak
By ALICE THOMSON
and RACHEL SYLVESTERO
zLeM Tureci and Ugur Sahin are
rapidly becoming the most cele-
brated marriage in science since Ma-
rie and Pierre Curie discovered ra-
dioactivity.
The German-Turkish couple are on the
brink of claiming the first effective corona-
virus vaccine but, like their predecessors,
they ride everywhere on bikes, are not in-
terested in the billions of dollars they
could make from their discovery and are
happiest working together in their white
lab coats, even on their wedding day.
Like Marie Curie, they are immigrants,
their parents both came to Germany from
Turkey as part of the guest-worker pro-
gram, and they may yet share a Nobel Prize
after their company, BioNTech — along
with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer — an-
nounced Monday their COVID vaccine is
more than 90 percent effective.
Sahin, born in Iskenderun, near the Syr-
ian border, is the son of a car-factory
worker. Tureci is the daughter of a surgeon
from Istanbul. They met at Saarland Uni-
versity in Hamburg and have been collabo-
rating ever since, although their obsession
until this year was cancer medicine, and
how to manipulate the immune system to
eradicate tumors.
The doctors conducted this interview in
separate offices, one after the other, but it
is clear this is very much a joint operation
and they have huge admiration for each
other. Their first company, Ganymed Phar-
maceuticals, specializing in monoclonal
antibodies to help the body fight cancer,
was eventually sold for $1.7 billion. Their
second company, BioNTech, based in their
hometown of Mainz, built personalized
cancer vaccines out of messenger mRNA
to carry genetic instructions to cells. Vi-
tally, they also knew these methods could
potentially work against a virus.
They were having breakfast on Jan. 27
when Sahin mentioned an article he had
read in The Lancet about a strange new
disease that appeared to be spreading in
Wuhan. He had immediately understood
the possible implications of a virus that
was highly infectious and could also be as-
ymptomatic. When he researched the air
links between Wuhan and other cities, he
realized that COVID-19 was likely to be-
come a global pandemic.
The couple went into action, creating the
Light Speed project, named because they
were convinced they needed to act as fast
as possible to prevent the world becoming
devastated by the coronavirus. Pfizer, the
US pharmaceutical company, helped with
funding.
“The first decision was to use our mRNA
technology for the pandemic setting. It is
very versatile,” says Tureci. Soon 600 of
their employees were focused on finding a
vaccine. “We realized it might become a big
threat. We talked about different scenarios
and what has emerged is one of the more
serious and frightening scenarios,” she says.
Their desire to find a vaccine, she ex-plains, did not grow out of any competi-
tive, financial or scientific impetus, but be-
cause they felt a “moral” imperative to
help the world.
“We have always needed to know the im-
mune system very well. This is an expert-
ise which makes it our duty to contribute
now,” she explains. The team has worked
in shifts night and day, ensuring that all its
experiments could continue round-the-
clock. “Many of us have not had vacations
and have worked through the weekends,
that is why we have been able to do it. We
are available for different time zones too;
we are in constant meetings with Pfizer in
America and with our Chinese partner.”
The couple never contemplated defeat.“We have been in the innovation field for
many years, we are habitualized not to think
about the scenario that it might not work but
rather to ensure that we address all potential
flaws,” Tureci says. “This very sober and sci-
entific way of doing it allows us to stay away
from the pessimistic mind-wandering mode.”B
UT they were still in new territory.
“There are many steps which needed
to be adapted. We have had new in-
sights and digested them to build on the
next step. You start with knowing nothing,
just building hypotheses, and then we saw
later on we got all the effects we wanted...
bits and pieces of information came to-
gether in these studies, which we foundencouraging and strengthened our belief
we could make a difference.”
As soon as the trial results began to come
through, they knew they were on to some-
thing. “I had not expected it to be 90 per-
cent effective, but after seeing the immu-
nology data I thought we will have some
sort of effect, except if the virus is very dif-
ferent from what we have encountered.”
It is not yet clear whether people who
have been inoculated can still pass the vi-
rus to others, even if they do not become
ill themselves. “They might be infectious.
As more trials come in we will learn more.
In a pandemic the first goal and objective
is to ensure that disease is prevented and
there is some herd immunity.”Meet the brilliant married medical duo