Ugur Sahin's BioNTech has made great advances in developing a vaccine for Covid-19, ready to be tested on humans by the end of April.
According to MSTF media reports, immunologist Ugur Sahin, the founder and CEO of BioNTech and the 2019 Mustafa(pbuh) Prize laureate for his outstanding work on the development and clinical testing of mRNA-based cancer vaccines, prepared to combat Coronavirus as the virus broke out in China three months ago.
According to Financial Times, Ugur Sahin read a scientific article in January about the first manifestations of this virus in a family in Wuhan, China. While many scientists dismissed this event as non-threatening, Sahin saw through the matter, predicting that this virus is going to spread across the globe.
Warning the board of BioNTech and forming a team to develop a potential vaccine to induce immunity and prevent Covid-19 infection, Sahin prepared for this uncalled-for global health threat.
BioNTech is currently testing the Covid-19 vaccine on lab rats. As BioNTech announced, the vaccines will be ready for trial on humans by the end of April 2020.
A week ago BioNTech announced that the company has embarked on a scientific discovery with Pfizer, an American pharmaceutical company, to "jointly develop BioNTech’s mRNA-based vaccine candidate BNT162 to prevent COVID-19 infection."
The company also announced that it will work jointly with Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical to develop BNT162 in China. "The companies will collaborate to conduct clinical trials in China leveraging Fosun Pharma’s extensive clinical development, regulatory, and commercial capabilities in the country," a BioNTech statement read.
Ugur Sahin
“This is a global pandemic, which requires a global effort. In joining forces with our partner Pfizer, we believe we can accelerate our effort to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to people around the world who need it,” said Sahin.
Regarding BioNTech's collaboration with Fosun Pharma, he also stated that “we see this collaboration as an important step in our global effort to expedite the development of our mRNA vaccine to prevent COVID-19 infection. Fosun Pharma shares our commitment to move rapidly to address the COVID-19 outbreak and brings deep development experience and an extensive network in the pharmaceutical market in China.”
“We feel a duty to exploit our full technology and immunotherapy expertise to help address the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. We are working closely together with regulatory agencies and our existing collaborators in the infectious disease field, including Pfizer, to rapidly initiate trials in order to make a vaccine available to the public as quickly as possible worldwide," said Sahin.
"In addition, we are working on a novel therapeutics approach for those patients who have already been infected – we plan to disclose more on that effort in the coming weeks.”
According to Sean Marett, BioNTech’s chief commercial officer, Sahin devotes his whole time to "preparing data for regulators, and investors, who will become crucial once production becomes a possibility" and "mentoring PhD students and overseeing experiments."
Owing to Sahin being an avid reader of scientific journals BioNTech was able to respond quickly to this pandemic and develop a vaccine against this obnoxious virus that so far has inflicted a terrible toll on around 200 countries around the world.
Source: Tehran Times
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