Uğur Şahin: Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA coronavirus vaccine is “fastest vaccine developed and approved in medical history”

Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on linkedin
Share on email
Share on print

This story is part of The Cancer Letter’s ongoing coverage of COVID-19’s impact on oncology. A full list of our coverage is available here.

When Uğur Şahin and his wife Özlem Türeci founded their company, BioNTech, in 2008, they set out to explore novel modalities for treating cancer—including messenger ribonucleic acid, a well-understood single-stranded molecule featured in most Biology 101 textbooks.

Alas, at the time, researchers hadn’t worked out how to use mRNA in human beings. Beyond the process of encoding specific protein-building instructions into the molecule, they needed to ensure that the non-native chains of nucleotides wouldn’t be dismantled by the body’s defenses before the mRNA could do what it was designed to do.

“When we started working on mRNA vaccines about 20 years ago, we realized that established mRNA vaccine vectors had a relatively poor potency, not allowing [the vaccine] to induce strong immune responses if applied directly in vivo,” Şahin, CEO of BioNTech, said Feb. 3 in a keynote address at the American Association for Cancer Research’s virtual COVID-19 and Cancer meeting.

“One guiding principle of our work was to improve the potency of mRNA vaccines by optimizing vaccine antigen expression directly into dendritic cells, which are clear regulators of adaptive immunity.”

To access this subscriber-only content please log in or renew your subscription.

Looking for IP Login? Our IP Login system is now automatic. If your institution has a site license, please log in from on site or via your VPN to access this content.

Login Subscribe
Matthew Bin Han Ong
Senior Editor
Table of Contents

YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN

When conducting a randomized clinical trial of a treatment regimen based on an immune checkpoint inhibitor, trial sponsors should include overall survival as an endpoint, FDA officials say.
Matthew Bin Han Ong
Senior Editor

Login