Ozlem Tureci, the co-founder of BioNTech, hopes to apply the company's SARS-CoV-2 vaccine success to its initial work developing cancer vaccines, the Associated Press reports.
It adds that, with the pandemic, Tureci and Ugur Sahin, her husband and BioNTech co-founder, switched from working on cancer vaccines to one for SARS-CoV-2. As the AP notes, the Pfizer-BioNTech SARS-CoV-2 vaccine received authorization in the UK and US less than a year later.
"It pays off to make bold decisions and to trust that if you have an extraordinary team, you will be able to solve any problem and obstacle which comes your way in real time," Tureci tells the AP. It adds that among the problems BioNTech faced were conducting large, global clinical trials and ramping up manufacturing.
The AP says BioNTech can use the experience and funds it now has for its cancer vaccine research. Tureci tells it that they have a number of mRNA-based cancer vaccines in the works and expects that they may be able to give them to patients in a few years.