Mainz, Germany · Startup BioNTech is a Mainz-based biotechnology company founded in 2008 by Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, a husband-and-wife team of immunologists, alongside Christoph Huber. Originally focused on individualized mRNA cancer immunotherapies, BioNTech gained global prominence through its partnership with Pfizer to develop one of the first approved COVID-19 vaccines (Comirnaty), which generated tens of billions in revenue. The company is publicly traded on NASDAQ and continues to invest heavily in its oncology pipeline, infectious disease vaccines, and next-generation mRNA therapeutics.
Tuebingen, Germany · Startup CureVac is a biopharmaceutical company based in Tuebingen, Germany, founded in 2000 as a pioneer in mRNA technology. The company was one of the earliest to explore messenger RNA as a therapeutic platform, long before mRNA became a household term during the COVID-19 pandemic. While its first-generation COVID vaccine candidate underperformed in clinical trials, CureVac pivoted to next-generation mRNA technologies and partnered with GSK on a second-generation COVID vaccine and other infectious disease programs. The company is publicly traded on NASDAQ and continues developing its proprietary mRNA optimization platform.