The Biontech corona vaccine developers are honored with one of the most important honors in German science.
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded the team around the company founders Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin the German Future Prize 2021 on Wednesday evening. They had managed to develop a vaccine against Covid-19 in an unprecedented short time and to bring it to approval with completed studies .
Berlin - The award for technology and innovation is endowed with 250,000 euros.
The prerequisite for the future award is not just innovation: the product must also be developed to be marketable.
The nomination alone is considered a high honor in scientific circles.
Biontech was one of the first companies to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus together with the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
With the mRNA vaccine, the Mainz-based company not only gave the global vaccination campaign an enormous boost, but also founded a new era in medicine.
The mRNA contained in the vaccine is the blueprint for a protein of the coronavirus.
With its help, the human cells produce the virus protein and the immune system can prepare itself for a possible infection with the virus.
Hopes rest on mRNA technology not only for vaccines against other infectious diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis, but also for cancer therapy, for example.
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The Biontech team competed against two competitors: The experts from Siemens Healthineers AG in Forchheim found a new type of technology for better CT images.
Researchers at the University of Münster and the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Ecology IME there developed a sustainable alternative to rubber, for example for the manufacture of tires.
The Federal President's Future Prize has been awarded since 1997.
dpa
