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Özlem Türeci

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Adapted from the English Wikipedia article Özlem Türeci, available under CC BY-SA 4.0Updated 11 August 2025
Özlem Türeci
Born (1967-03-06) March 6, 1967 (age 59)
Siegen, West Germany
Occupation(s)Physician, scientist, business leader
Years active1992–present
Known forCo-founder and Chief Medical Officer of BioNTech; development of first approved mRNA COVID-19 vaccine

Özlem Türeci (; born 6 March 1967) is a German physician, scientist, and business leader. In 2008, she co-established the biotechnology firm BioNTech, which, in 2020, created the first approved messenger RNA-based vaccine targeting COVID-19. Since 2018, Türeci has held the position of BioNTech's chief medical officer. In 2021, she was named Professor of Personalized Immunotherapy at the Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology (HI-TRON) and at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Together with her husband, Uğur Şahin, she has been honored with numerous awards acknowledging their scientific and entrepreneurial contributions.

Personal life and education

Born in 1967 in Siegen, West Germany, Özlem Türeci is the child of Turkish immigrant parents. Her mother worked as a biologist, while her father, originally from Istanbul, was a surgeon employed at St. Elisabeth-Stift hospital in Lastrup. She attended Städtisches Gymnasium in Bad Driburg and later the Werner-von-Siemens-Gymnasium in Bad Harzburg. Inspired by the nuns caring for patients at her father’s hospital, she chose to study medicine.

Türeci pursued medical studies at Saarland University in Homburg and earned her doctorate degree in 1992. As a Heisenberg fellow of the German Research Foundation, her research concentrated on tumor-specific molecules and advancing cancer immunotherapy approaches. In 2002, she completed her habilitation in molecular medicine at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

During her final year at Saarland University Hospital, she met Uğur Şahin. United by their ambition to utilize the immune system to combat cancer, they married in 2002 and welcomed a daughter in 2006. Despite their substantial wealth accumulated through their business successes, the couple leads a modest lifestyle.

Career

Türeci is an expert medical scientist specializing in immunology. Her work centers on identifying tumor-specific antigens and creating tailored treatments for cancer as well as addressing infectious diseases and disorders affecting the immune and nervous systems.

University Medicine Mainz

At the University Medical Center Mainz, Türeci engaged in immunology research and has held the position of private lecturer specializing in cancer immunotherapy since 2002. Together with her husband and mentor, Christoph Huber, she established TRON ("translational oncology") in 2001, a biopharmaceutical research institute dedicated to developing innovative diagnostics and therapeutics targeting cancer and other diseases with significant unmet medical needs. Two enterprises founded by Türeci and her husband trace their origins back to this academic research. In late 2021, she was named professor of "Personalized Immunotherapy" at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz as well as at the Helmholtz Institute "HI-TRON Mainz," which was founded in 2019.

Ganymed Pharmaceuticals

In 2001, Türeci and her future spouse launched Ganymed Pharmaceuticals with a focus on pioneering a novel category of cancer treatments known as monoclonal antibodies. The firm developed zolbetuximab, a therapeutic agent used for esophageal and gastric cancers. She held the role of chief scientific officer from 2001 until 2008, subsequently assuming the chief executive officer position until 2016. That same year, Ganymed was acquired by Astellas Pharma for $1.4 billion, becoming one of its subsidiaries.

BioNTech

In 2008, Türeci, her husband, and Christoph Huber founded BioNTech, a biotechnology company based in Mainz whose name stands for Biopharmaceutical New Technologies. Since 2018, Türeci has served as Chief Medical Officer (CMO), responsible for overseeing Clinical Research and Development. Prior to that, from 2009 to 2018, she chaired the company’s scientific advisory board. Initially, BioNTech concentrated on creating active immunotherapies using messenger RNA (mRNA) and other innovative platforms aimed at personalized cancer treatments and severe diseases. Collaborating closely with TRON scientists, they recruited Katalin Karikó, who innovated a technique to prevent inflammatory responses triggered by mRNA drug administration.

Project Lightspeed – COVID-19 Vaccine Development

In January 2020, upon reading an article in The Lancet regarding a novel coronavirus later designated COVID-19, Türeci’s husband recognized the potential for a global pandemic. Leveraging their two decades of expertise in mRNA vaccine technology, the couple initiated efforts to develop a vaccine as the virus rapidly spread throughout China. They joined forces with the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer—already collaborating on an influenza vaccine—to jointly bear development and distribution expenses. By March 2020, five vaccine candidates were ready for human clinical trials; by November 2020, data demonstrated efficacy exceeding 90%. Regulatory approval followed in Britain and the United States in December 2020, with the first vaccination administered in Coventry. By February 2021, BioNTech announced plans to manufacture two billion doses by the end of that year.

Türeci spearheaded clinical trials for BNT162b2 (commercially known as Comirnaty), the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. She credits the accelerated timeline to extensive international cooperation involving Pfizer and Chinese partner Fosun Pharma. Reflecting its global footprint, BioNTech’s diverse workforce includes employees from over 60 nations.

Ongoing Projects

Building on the financial success of its vaccine, BioNTech is committed to furthering its foundational goal of creating mRNA-based cancer vaccines. In March 2021, Türeci highlighted that multiple vaccines were under development, with plans to make them accessible to patients within a two-year timeframe. The approach centers on personalized treatments tailored to individual patients, having already administered therapies to over 440 individuals spanning 17 different tumor categories.

In addition, BioNTech is working on an mRNA vaccine aimed at malaria prevention and is investigating opportunities to establish vaccine manufacturing infrastructure in Africa.

Additional Information

Türeci has submitted upwards of 500 international patent applications and authored more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific publications. She remains actively engaged internationally as a lecturer.

Professional Affiliations

Selected Publications

Honors and Distinctions

In recognition of their rapid development of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine within a year following the virus's genomic sequencing, Türeci and her husband were honored as Financial Times People of the Year in 2020, an achievement described as "one of the greatest medical breakthroughs of our era." They were also featured on the cover of Time in January 2021.

Since March 2022, Türeci holds honorary citizenship in Mainz. She was nominated by the Rhineland-Palatinate SPD parliamentary group and participated as a voting member in the 17th Federal Assembly during the 2022 German presidential election.

On 29 March 2023, she attended a state dinner hosted by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at Bellevue Palace honoring King Charles III.

Honorary Doctorates

Awards

See also

Further reading

External links

Related profiles

UUğur ŞahinMMurat KurnazVVikki Abrahams
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