BioNTech built its mRNA science for cancer, then used it on COVID in months
For years Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci worked on a single goal: using messenger RNA to make cancer treatments tailored to each patient. In January 2020, days after the new coronavirus's genetic code was published, their Mainz company started a crash programme called Project Lightspeed. Before the year was out, the resulting vaccine had emergency approval in Britain and America.
BioNTech, short for Biopharmaceutical New Technologies, was founded in 2008 on research by Şahin, Türeci and Christoph Huber, backed by 180 million euros of seed money from investors including the Strüngmann brothers' family office. The science was hard. Messenger RNA breaks down quickly in the body, is difficult to deliver into cells and at first produced only small, brief bursts of protein. The Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó joined as a senior vice president in 2013; her finding that altering the building block uridine made mRNA far less likely to provoke the immune system later earned her a share of the 2023 Nobel Prize.
Funding grew steadily: a 270 million dollar round in January 2018, a flu-vaccine research deal with Pfizer that August, 325 million more in 2019 and a Nasdaq listing in October that year. When the pandemic arrived, BioNTech partnered with Pfizer for most of the world and Fosun Pharma for China, keeping Germany and Turkey for itself. Trials began in April 2020, and in November the partners reported 95 percent efficacy. The vaccine, Comirnaty, became the first approved mRNA vaccine, and in August 2021 the company's value briefly topped 100 billion dollars.
Since then BioNTech has invested in cancer research and new manufacturing. It bought the British AI firm InstaDeep in 2023, opened a factory built from modular containers in Kigali, Rwanda, that December, and in June 2025 acquired its former vaccine rival CureVac for about 1.25 billion dollars.
In 2026 the company announced it would hand COVID vaccine production to Pfizer and close several sites to concentrate on oncology, and it was reported that its two founders plan to leave and start a new company.
Source: BioNTech
