Prof. Ozlem Tureci, M.D.

Ozlem Tureci is a German physician and immunologist with Turkish roots who trained alongside Ugur Sahin at Saarland University Medical Center. Her clinical experience treating cancer patients directly informed BioNTech's founding mission: she witnessed firsthand how standardized therapies failed because they could not address the genetic uniqueness of each tumor. Tureci's research focus on harnessing the full potential of the immune system led her to explore multiple therapeutic modalities including antibodies, cell therapies, and mRNA, with mRNA emerging as the most advanced platform after two decades of optimization. Her defining founding philosophy was that scientific innovations must reach patients broadly, not remain trapped in academic journals, a conviction that drove the transition from university research to commercial biotechnology.

Özlem Türeci is a co-founder of BioNTech and its Chief Medical Officer. A physician and immunologist born in Germany to a Turkish family, she trained at Saarland University, where she met Ugur Sahin; they married in 2002. Her clinical work with cancer patients shaped BioNTech's founding idea that tumors differ so much between patients that treatment should be tailored to each one. She co-founded Ganymed Pharmaceuticals in 2001 and BioNTech in 2008, and has led clinical development across the company's programs, from early mRNA cancer vaccine trials through the Comirnaty studies and the current oncology pipeline. She and Sahin received the German Future Prize in 2021 with Katalin Karikó and Christoph Huber. In March 2026 BioNTech announced that Türeci and Sahin would leave by the end of 2026 to run a new company developing next-generation mRNA medicines.