Vaccine places Germany’s BioNTech in the spotlight

Pharma firm’s gene technology key to rapid development

MAINZ, Germany — The email that arrived in the ancient German city of Mainz shortly before 1 a.m. marked a turning point in the global effort to deliver a reliable vaccine against the coronavirus pandemic — and for the little-known biotechnology company that helped develop it.

BioNTech has at times been portrayed as the junior partner in U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s race to get approval for the COVID vaccine a pandemic-weary world is desperately waiting for. In fact, the company’s use of gene technology to beat the virus was key to the rapid development of the vaccine that British regulators approved for emergency use early Wednesday.

Founded 12 years ago, BioNTech specializes in harnessing so-called messenger RNA, or mRNA, to train the immune system to attack hostile invaders, from viruses to tumors. Until now, the technology had never been approved for a drug in humans, but the company’s founders said they immediately saw the potential when the virus first emerged early this year.

“When we understood that this outbreak in China could become a global pandemic we felt the obligation to start vaccine development,” BioNTech’s Chief Executive Ugur Sahin said. “We have technologies in place which allow us to make vaccines and evaluate candidates in an ultra-fast fashion.”

But Sahin said he and his colleagues also understood they didn’t have the means to roll out mass trials of vaccine candidates.

He immediately reached out to Pfizer, with whom BioNTech had previously started work on a flu vaccine, and researchers at the two companies began working together even before commercial contracts had been signed.

“This trust-based relationship is one of the key factors why we have been so fast, because it allowed allowed us to share data, to share information, to start to avoid any type of delay,” Sahin said.

What followed was a flurry of activity as BioNTech and Pfizer raced rivals such as Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Moderna to become the first to get emergency authorization for a COVID vaccine. Unlike rivals in China and Russia, all of the companies have followed the established path of conducting trials in three stages, publishing results as they go along and submitting them to independent regulators for review.

While authorities in the United States, Britain and the European Union indicated they would make a decision before the end of the year, it wasn’t clear who would be first until U.K. authorities announced they’d approved the BioNTech-Pfizer shot Wednesday.

“It was (an email) very early this morning, in the early, early hours from the regulators saying we had received approval,” said Sean Marett, BioNTech’s chief commercial officer.

Marett, a soft-spoken Brit with long experience in the pharmaceutical industry, said the company hasn’t had time to celebrate yet.

“We’re too busy worrying about packing boxes for the U.K.,” he said.

MICHAEL PROBST/AP In a major step in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, German-based BioNTech and Pfizer have won permission for emergency use of their COVID-19 vaccine in Britain.