How it started
Foundation (2008–2014)
BioNTech was founded in 2008 based on research by Uğur Şahin, Özlem Türeci, and Christoph Huber, with a seed investment of €180 million from MIG Capital, a Munich-based venture capital firm, the family office of Andreas and Thomas Strüngmann, and the present chairman of the supervisory board, Helmut Jeggle. In 2009, the acquisition of EUFETS and JPT Peptide Technologies took place.
The company's origins lie in research conducted by Şahin, Türeci, and their teams, who over several decades made progress in addressing challenges using messenger RNA (mRNA) as a therapeutic. Their aim was to utilize mRNA for the development of individualized cancer immunotherapies. They focused on overcoming issues such as mRNA's limited stability in the body, developing formulations to effectively deliver mRNA to target cells, and improving protein production, which was initially low and short-lived. In 2013, Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó, who later shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, joined BioNTech as a senior vice president. She later stayed an external advisor. Karikó discovered that modifying the nucleotide uridine could reduce the immunogenicity of mRNA, making it more suitable for therapeutic use. All of these scientific discoveries were utilized in BioNTech's mRNA-based drug development.
Expansion, Series A financing (2015–2018)
Between 2014 and 2018, research results on mRNA mechanisms were published by BioNTech. Collaborations and commercialization agreements were concluded with various companies and scientific institutions starting in 2015. In January 2018, BioNTech closed a US$270 million Series A financing round to further expand the company's immunotherapy research.
In August 2018, the company entered into a multi-year research and development (R&D) collaboration with the US company Pfizer, Inc. to develop mRNA-based vaccines for prevention of influenza. Under the terms of the agreement, following BioNTech's completion of a first-in-human clinical study, Pfizer would assume sole responsibility for further clinical development and commercialization of mRNA-based flu vaccines.
From Wikipedia’s article on BioNTech, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3