Özlem Türeci

Özlem Türeci (born 6 March 1967) is a German physician, scientist and entrepreneur.

Born in Siegen, West Germany in 1967, Türeci is the daughter of Turkish immigrants.

Her mother was a biologist.

Her father, a surgeon, was from Istanbul and worked at the Catholic hospital St. Elisabeth-Stift in Lastrup in the district of Cloppenburg.

She attended, among others, the Städtisches Gymnasium in Bad Driburg and the Werner-von-Siemens-Gymnasium in Bad Harzburg.

As a child, she was strongly inspired by the nuns who worked to help people at the hospital her father worked at.

She studied medicine at Saarland University in Homburg and received her doctorate from the Medical Faculty of Saarland in 1992.

She was a Heisenberg fellow of the German Research Foundation.

Her research focused on the identification and characterization of tumor-specific molecules and the development of immunotherapies against cancer.

Together with her husband and their mentor, the immunologist Christoph Huber, she developed the concept of a "translational institute", which was realized in 2001 with the foundation of TRON, short for "translational oncology."

This is a biopharmaceutical research institute that develops new diagnostics and drugs for the therapy of cancer and other diseases with high unmet medical needs.

Two companies later founded by Türeci and her husband are spin-offs of work done at the university in Mainz.

In 2001, Türeci and her future husband founded the company Ganymed Pharmaceuticals.

This company focused on a new class of cancer drugs called ideal monoclonal antibodies and developed zolbetuximab, which is used to treat esophageal and gastric cancer.

She was chief scientific officer from 2001 to 2008 and led the company from 2008 to 2016 in the role of chief executive officer.

In 2002, she completed her habilitation qualification at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz in the field of molecular medicine.

While completing her final year of studies, Türeci met her future husband, Uğur Şahin, who was working at Saarland University Hospital in Homburg.

They discovered that they shared an interest in using the body's immune system to fight cancer.

The couple married in 2002 and had a daughter four years later.

Although Türeci and her husband became billionaires as a result of their business interests, the family continues to live modestly.

Due to the proposition of the Rhineland-Palatinate parliamentary group of the SPD, she will be a voting member of the 17th Federal Assembly for the 2022 German presidential election.

Türeci has been an honorary citizen of the state capital Mainz since March 2022.

Özlem Türeci works as a medical scientist and basic researcher in the field of immunology.

She researches target structures in order to develop new therapies against cancer, infectious diseases and diseases of the immune and nervous systems.

One focus is on the identification and characterization of tumor-specific molecules and the development of personalized therapeutic approaches.

Türeci was a staff member of the in the special research area of immunology.

Since 2002, she has been a private lecturer there in the field of cancer immunotherapy.

In 2008, she co-founded the biotechnology company BioNTech, which in 2020 developed the first messenger RNA-based vaccine approved for use against COVID-19.

In 2008, Türeci, her husband, and Christoph Huber founded the Mainz-based biotechnology company BioNTech, choosing a name derived from Biopharmaceutical New Technologies.

From 2009 to 2018, she served as chair of the company's scientific advisory board.

Originally, the company focused on the development and manufacturing of active immunotherapies based on Messenger RNA (mRNA) and other technologies for a patient-specific approach to the treatment of cancer and other serious diseases.

Along with researchers from TRON, they hired Katalin Karikó, who had developed a way to avoid triggering an inflammatory reaction when injecting an mRNA drug.

In 2016, the company was sold to Astellas Pharma for $1.4 billion and is now a subsidiary of that company.

Türeci has served as BioNTech's chief medical officer since 2018.

Since 2021, she has been Professor of Personalized Immunotherapy at the Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology (HI-TRON) and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

Türeci and her spouse, Uğur Şahin, have won a number of awards.

Türeci has been Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the company since 2018.

As CMO, she is primarily responsible for Clinical Research and Development.

Türeci accepted the appointment to the professorship for "Personalized Immunotherapy" at the University Medicine of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Helmholtz Institute "HI-TRON Mainz" founded in 2019 at the end of 2021.

In January 2020, Türeci's husband read an article in The Lancet medical journal regarding a novel coronavirus later named COVID-19.