The couple will leave at the end of 2026 at the latest, then their current service contracts will end, as Biontech announced in Mainz.

Your new biotechnology company will therefore focus on developing the next generation of mRNA-based drugs. However, the couple want to remain shareholders in Biontech; according to the company, they currently hold around 15 percent.

Rights and technologies go to new company

According to Biontech, the plan is to bring rights and mRNA technologies into the new company. In return, Biontech will receive a minority stake in the new company as well as license fees. Milestone payments have also been agreed, meaning Biontech will receive money from the new company when certain development steps are reached. A binding agreement on this should be concluded by the end of the first half of 2026, explained Biontech.

Sahin and Türeci founded Biontech in 2008. The aim was to develop mRNA-based cancer therapies. During the corona pandemic, all of Mainz’s capacities were quickly put into developing an mRNA vaccine against Covid-19 – with success. The company won the race against a number of competitors and, together with US partner Pfizer, received the first market approval for a corona vaccine.

Lots of awards and big profits

Biontech subsequently earned billions and expanded significantly. Sahin and Türeci received numerous prestigious awards, including the Grand Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2021 and, together with their former companion and later Nobel Prize winner Katalin Karikó, the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, one of Germany’s most important medical prizes, in 2022.

Years after the pandemic, profits and sales at Biontech have shrunk significantly again, and although business with the corona vaccine continues, research into mRNA therapies against cancer and other diseases has long been the focus again.

Hope for approvals in oncology

The vaccine is still the only Biontech product on the market that is regularly further developed. Hopes for the future rest on several late-stage clinical trials for cancer drugs. Biontech is targeting several applications for approval for oncology therapies by 2030.

And why did Sahin and Türeci leave? “Özlem and I want to once again break new ground as pioneers,” said Sahin in a statement. It has always been her vision to translate science into progress for patients. Now there is an opportunity to develop the next generation of innovations.

Both Sahin and Türeci are children of Turkish immigrants. At the age of four, Sahin moved with his family to Cologne, where his father worked at Ford. Türeci grew up in the Cloppenburg district of Lower Saxony; her father worked as a doctor in a Catholic hospital. The two met during their medical training at the university clinic in Homburg, Saarland, and they later went to Mainz together.

Exit after Curevac takeover

The announcement of this move comes a few months after a major deal in the German biotechnology industry. Biontech had taken over the former competitor in the race for a corona vaccine, the Tübingen company Curevac. Biontech and Curevac had previously settled their dispute over corona vaccine patents.

After the announced departure of Sahin and Türeci, Biontech’s supervisory board has now begun looking for successors for the two in order to ensure a smooth transition, as it was said. Sahin and Türeci have repeatedly demonstrated their innovative strength throughout their careers, said Supervisory Board Chairman Helmut Jeggle. They are supported in their decision to “seize the opportunity to use their strengths and devote their full attention to a new company in order to exploit the full potential of mRNA-based technologies.”

It is not yet known what the new company will be called, where it will be located and what legal form it will have. But it definitely should not become a subsidiary of Biontech. For Sahin and Türeci, this is their third founding after Biontech (2008) and Ganymed Pharmaceuticals (2001).

Sahin: Biontech is very well positioned

Biontech’s vaccine business and the further development of the pipeline with possible new products will remain unaffected by the two’s exit, emphasized Biontech. Sahin said he and Türeci built Biontech from a start-up to a global biopharmaceutical company in 18 years. The company is very well positioned to establish itself as a commercial biopharmaceutical company with several approved products.

Sahin and Türeci, who despite all the economic success have always remained scientists at heart, will now follow this from the sidelines.