Co-founded by Germany-based Turkish professors Özlem Türeci and husband Uğur Şahin, BioNTech has developed a COVID-19 vaccine in cooperation with leading US drug maker Pfizer.
A joint BioNTech-Pfizer communiqué revealed that the vaccine proved to be more than 90 percent effective against the virus which kept the entire world population threatened since its first outbreak in China. The two drug makers further unveiled that the candidate vaccine will be submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization before the end of November.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen released a statement on the successful clinical research of the vaccine, in which she said the EU Commission decided to purchase up to 300 million doses of the vaccine.