How a novel approach helps combat the COVID-19 pandemic

With almost five million suspected deaths worldwide and counting, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the deadliest disasters in human history. Once its global spread and destructive force became clear at the beginning of 2020, scientists around the world raced to develop a vaccine to stop the novel virus in its tracks and save millions of lives. Özlem Türeci, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of BioNTech, is a physician, immunologist, and cancer researcher with translational and clinical experience. Türeci has led the discovery of cancer antigens, the advancement of mRNA-based individualized and off-the-shelf vaccine candidates and other types of immunotherapies which are currently in clinical development. Along with her team at BioNTech, she developed one of the first mRNA-vaccines for effectively preventing COVID-19 infections. At Falling Walls, Özlem will share how to translate science into industrial production and how to turn these innovations into medication by showing how her team made the “mRNA Toolbox” ready for use in industry and the market.

The Falling Walls Science Summit was part of Berlin Science Week 2021 and hosted by the Falling Walls Foundation. To find out more go to https://www.falling-walls.com