Vaccine 1st puts spotlight on German pharma company BioNTech

MAINZ, Germany (AP) — The email that arrived in the ancient German city of Mainz shortly before 1 a.m. in the morning marked a turning point in the global effort to deliver a reliable vaccine against the coronavirus pandemic - and for the little-known biotechnology company that helped develop it.

BioNTech has at times been portrayed as the junior partner in U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's race to get approval for the COVID vaccine a pandemic-weary world is desperately waiting for. In fact, the company's use of gene technology to beat the virus was key to the rapid development of the vaccine that British regulators OK'd for emergency use early Wednesday.

Founded twelve years ago, BioNTech specializes in harnessing so-called messenger RNA, or mRNA, to train the immune system to attack hostile invaders, from viruses to tumors. Until now, the technology had never been approved for a drug in humans, but the company's founders said they immediately saw the potential when the virus first emerged early this year.

“When we understood that this outbreak in China could become a global pandemic we felt the obligation to start vaccine development," BioNTech's Chief Executive Ugur Sahin told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

“We have technologies in place which allow us to make vaccines and evaluate candidates in an ultra-fast fashion,” he said.

But Sahin, who came to Germany from Turkey with his parents as a young child, said he and his colleagues also understood they didn't have the means to roll out mass trials of vaccine candidates with tens of thousands of participants, a key part of testing whether the shot would be both effective and safe.

“It was very clear from the beginning that we need to to go into a collaboration,” said Sahin.

He immediately...