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The husband-and-wife duo behind BioNTech, the German company that has joined Pfizer to produce the COVID-19 vaccine, have unveiled plans for yet another virus shot, after their efforts to date have raised $40 billion .
dr. Ugur Sahin and Dr. Ozlem Tureci made their comments during a trip to Pfizer’s United States headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. the Boston Globe.
The couple founded BioNTech in 2008 and count the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as one of their major investors. Their research was seen as the driving force behind the first Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination collaboration — and the pair have now insisted that neither they nor the pandemic are over.
Sahin told the paper: “This virus will be with us for many years to come and we are still in the pandemic phase of this outbreak. So all predictions that the pandemic will [soon] are just not true.’
In total, the pair are developing three new shots with clinical trials set to take place over the next six months.
dr. Ugur Sahin and Dr. Ozlem Tureci founded BioNTech in 2008 and consider the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation one of their major investors
In total, BioNTech is developing three new shots with clinical trials that will take place over the next six months
In September, the US and Europe approved the use of a new booster shot targeting the Omicron variant. The booster is made by Pfizer and BioNTech as well as their competitor Moderna.
BioNTech unveiled its latest shot weeks after President Joe Biden told CBS News ’60 Minutes’ that “the pandemic is over.”
“We still have a problem with COVID. We are still working on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice that no one wears masks,’ he said. “Everyone seems to be in pretty good shape so I think it’s changing.”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterated that, saying the world has never been in a better position to end the COVID-19 pandemic, his most optimistic view of the years-long health crisis yet.
‘We’re not there yet. But the end is in sight,” he said. Biden was promptly scolded by the CDC, even though most Americans have left COVID and are back to living as before.
President Joe Biden stated in an interview with CBS News that the COVID-19 pandemic is ‘over’
In September, the US and Europe approved the use of a new booster shot targeting the Omicron variant
Pfizer announced in July that the company’s vaccine, Comirnaty, brought in $8.85 billion in sales, and the treatment Paxlovid added another $8.12 billion, as company revenues totaled $27.74 billion.
Pfizer maintained its outlook for full-year revenue for Comirnaty of approximately $32 billion and Paxlovid revenue of approximately $22 billion.
Comirnaty is by far the most popular of the four vaccines approved for use in the United States. More than 355 million doses of the dual vaccine have been administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sahin told the Globe that one of the new vaccines will help the recipient’s antibodies attack the virus in a “more prominent way.”
Husband and wife Ugur Sahin and Uzlem Tuereci are the couple behind the COVID-19 vaccine that changed the world
Pfizer’s US campus in the Osborn Triangle close to Harvard University
Another, he says, would help boost a person’s T-cell response. The T-cell is an area of the immune system that fights infections that are already in the body.
The latter, referred to as the company’s “most ambitious” by the Globe, aims to help a person’s immune system fight off strains of COVID-19 that we don’t even know about.
Tureci told the Globe: “We will continue to monitor all upcoming new variants. We have an AI [artificial intelligence] based early warning system with which we screen emerging variants.’
Sahin was born in Turkey and grew up in Germany, where his parents worked in a Ford factory. Trained as a physician, Sahin became a professor and researcher focused on immunotherapy.
He worked in teaching hospitals in Cologne and the southwestern city of Homburg, where he met immunologist Tuereci during his early academic career. Medical research and oncology became a shared passion.
Tuereci, the daughter of a Turkish doctor who emigrated to Germany, once said in an interview that they both made time for lab work on the day of their wedding.
Together, they honed the immune system as a potential ally in the fight against cancer, trying to target the unique genetic makeup of each tumor.
The pair founded BioNTech in 2008 with the goal of pursuing a much wider range of cancer immunotherapy tools.
Pfizer accounts for the vast majority of Comirnaty’s revenues and shares profits, as well as the costs of making and distributing the vaccine, with development partner BioNTech
The COVID-19 vaccine debuted in late 2020 and became Pfizer’s top-selling product in the second quarter of last year, before children started getting the preventative injections and adults getting booster doses.
Pfizer accounts for the vast majority of Comirnaty’s revenues and shares profits, as well as the costs of making and distributing the vaccine, with development partner BioNTech.
Comirnaty and Paxlovid have become major revenue streams for Pfizer and have helped the pharmaceutical giant build a cash supply.
In May, Pfizer announced plans to start using some of that stock.
It said it would spend $11.6 billion in cash to buy the remaining portion of migraine treatment developer Biohaven Pharmaceutical that it does not already own.
In June, Pfizer and BioNTech announced they had signed a $3.2 billion deal with the US government for 105 million doses of their COVID-19 vaccine, which could be delivered later this summer.
The deal includes the supply of a modified Omicron-modified vaccine, pending regulatory approval, Pfizer said.
The average price per dose in the deal is more than $30, an increase of more than 50% from the $19.50 per dose the US government paid in its original contract with Pfizer.
The U.S. government also has the option to purchase up to 195 million additional doses, bringing the total number of possible doses to 300 million, the companies said.
The contract will boost vaccine sales in 2022 for Pfizer and BioNTech, which will share the profits from the injections.
Pfizer forecasted sales of COVID-19 vaccines to reach $32 billion this year. Analysts have forecast revenue of about $33.6 billion for the withdrawals for 2022 on average.
According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. government has distributed nearly 450 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in the United States since it was first approved in December 2020.
More than 350 million of those doses have been administered.
Unable to arrange more COVID-19 funding from Congress earlier this month, the Biden administration was forced to reallocate $10 billion in existing funding to pay for additional vaccines and treatments.
According to HHS, the money to pay doses in this new contract will come from that funding.