Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, a Muslim couple born in Turkey and immigrated to Germany when they were young with their parents, founded BioNTech. Sahin earned his MD, and PhD from University of Cologne - which does not charge any tuition fees. After graduation, he then started working as an internal medicine and hematology/oncology physician at the University of Cologne Hospital, Uniklinik Köln.
The American news cares about its citizens. About half of All Americans would suffer full Cardiopulmonary arrest if they knew who and what saved them:
1) Muslim 2) Immigrant 3) Socialized Health Care 4) Free College Education
The history of the Pfizer / BioNTech research funding for the development is an education in itself.
The husband and wife team: Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci
The Husband-and-Wife Team Behind the Leading Vaccine to Solve Covid-19 - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Two years (three now) ago, Dr. Ugur Sahin took the stage at a conference in Berlin and made a bold prediction. Speaking to a roomful of infectious disease experts, he said his company might be able to use its so-called messenger RNA technology to rapidly develop a vaccine in the event of a global pandemic. At the time, Dr. Sahin and his company, BioNTech, were little known outside the small world of European biotechnology start-ups. BioNTech, which Dr. Sahin founded with his wife, Dr. Özlem Türeci, was mostly focused on cancer treatments. It had never brought a product to market. Covid-19 did not yet exist. . . BioNTech began work on the vaccine in January, after Dr. Sahin read an article in the medical journal The Lancet that left him convinced that the coronavirus, at the time spreading quickly in parts of China, would explode into a full-blown pandemic. Scientists at the company, based in Mainz, Germany, canceled vacations and set to work on what they called Project Lightspeed. . . BioNTech and Pfizer had been working together on a flu vaccine since 2018, and in March, they agreed to collaborate on a coronavirus vaccine. . . BioNTech and Pfizer had been working together on a flu vaccine since 2018, and in March, they agreed to collaborate on a coronavirus vaccine. . Dr. Sahin, who is Turkish, has developed a friendship with Albert Bourla, the Greek chief executive of Pfizer.
Germany funded the development of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine—not U.S.’s Operation Warp Speed
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was funded by Germany—not US Operation Warp Speed | Fortune The truth is that Pfizer didn’t receive any funding from Operation Warp Speed for the development, clinical trial and manufacturing of the vaccine. Rather, its partner, BioNTech SE, has received money – from the German government.
An earlier article in FT on how Mainz, where BioNTech is located, is benefiting from the tax windfall.
But the company, unknown even to many of the city’s 220,000 inhabitants before the pandemic, has almost single-handedly lifted Mainz’s corporation tax haul from €173m for 2020 to more than €1bn in 2021, according to several people with knowledge of the matter
Having achieved global fame for Gutenberg’s 15th-century printing press, Mainz has long since been the poor relation to neighbouring Frankfurt, Germany’s financial centre. But unlike Sindelfingen, a south-west German city that is home to a Mercedes-Benz plant and which used recent tax windfalls to install marble zebra crossings, Mainz is not going on a spending spree.