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Özlem Türeci: Turning the immune system into a weapon against cancer
Photo: Pool / Getty Images
The Biontech founder Özlem Türeci takes over a professorship for personalized immunotherapy in Mainz.
The position is based at the Johannes Gutenberg University and the Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology, the so-called HI-TRON.
The 54-year-old should "advance the development of innovative immunotherapy concepts and their preclinical research," announced the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg.
Your certificate of appointment was therefore presented to Türeci on Monday.
She wanted to help make the patient's immune system "with personalized approaches a powerful weapon against cancer," explained Türeci.
"Their expertise in the development of innovative cancer immunotherapies is unparalleled anywhere in the world," said DKFZ CEO Michael Baumann.
University President Georg Krausch declared that Türeci was an "excellent scientist for the team at Johannes Gutenberg University" in Mainz.
Türeci completed his habilitation at the Mainz University Medical Center in 2002.
She then became a working group leader in an immunological collaborative research center.
Since completing her habilitation, she worked as a private lecturer in the field of cancer immunotherapy at the Mainz University Medical Center.
In 2009, Türeci was involved in founding the pharmaceutical company Biontech, of which she is the medical director.
She and her husband Uğur Şahin were recently awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Cologne and the Paul Ehrlich Prize for developing the Biontech corona vaccine.
ptz / AFP