BioNTech’s Covid Vaccine Is A Triumph Of Innovation And Immigration | Hans-Werner Sinn | Business

T.The world took notice when the German startup BioNTech announced a breakthrough in the development of a new type of vaccine to fight Covid-19. After testing tens of thousands of people, BioNTech’s vaccine has been shown to be 95% effective in providing protection for those who would otherwise have been infected. The company was the first to apply for emergency use authorization for a coronavirus vaccine in the United States and announced that it will soon take similar measures in Europe.

Antiviral vaccines are generally made from devitalized viral materials manufactured outside the body, but BioNTech has pursued a new method of injecting genetically modified RNA into the patient. This causes the patient’s cells to produce a relevant Sars-CoV-2 virus characteristic protein on their own, allowing the body’s immune system to develop an effective response before encountering the actual virus.

The big advantage of this approach is that it allows the production of more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine within a few months. It is also highly safe because modified RNA can only survive a very low temperature and rapidly degrades in the body once it has done its job. Any subsequent damage to the body is therefore extremely unlikely.

In close collaboration with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, BioNTech’s success portends rapid roll-out of vaccination across Europe and the United States. In fact, delivery contracts are already in place for millions of doses of the vaccine. And it’s encouraging that the U.S. drug company Moderna has also announced quantitatively similar results in its studies, using a closely related process involving a slightly more stable RNA variant.

More broadly, many other companies are advancing the frontier of next-generation RNA-based vaccines. Among them is CureVac, a company based in the German city of Tübingen, which has invented a new rapid programming process for RNA that promises to be widely applicable.

Thanks to these new technologies, the world will probably be freed from the scourge of Covid-19 in 2021 or 2022. Once again, we will be able to eat out and go to the theater without worries; weddings and private parties will no longer be a cause for concern. The airline and travel industry will quickly return to normal and the global economy will be revitalized after a long period of blockade-induced paralysis.

One major difference is that we will emerge with an entirely new pharmaceutical industry that promises to deliver highly effective vaccines against numerous other infectious diseases. Furthermore, RNA can, in principle, be programmed to produce antibodies against specific types of cancer, promising forms of treatment that are far more gentle than chemotherapy.

At BioNTech, the pioneers of the new RNA-based approach to drug development are Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, a couple specializing in oncology and genetic research. Şahin, who holds a chair in experimental oncology at the University of Mainz, is one of the best researchers in the world in the study of personalized vaccines for cancer immunotherapy. Both are German citizens born to Turkish immigrants who arrived in the country decades ago.

Şahin and Türeci are the first examples of successful integration of immigrants – including Turkish ones – into German society. They managed not only to gain a foothold in Germany, but to thrive, thanks to hard work, an entrepreneurial spirit and strong cultural traditions.

BioNTech’s history shows that successful immigration goes far beyond the magnetism of well-being. If handled correctly, immigration is a vital source of new life and new ideas for an aging society.

It is worth mentioning that the German pharmaceutical industry was one of the first contraceptive pill manufacturers, starting in the 1960s. No other country has embraced this method of contraception more fully. As a result, however, the German fertility rate had dropped dramatically in the early 1970s: six years before Italy experienced a similar decline, 10 years before Spain and 20 years before Poland.

Germany paid the price for this first pharmaceutical success. Its largest population cohort includes people in their 50s, born shortly before the pill-induced drop in birth rates. All subsequent generational cohorts have steadily dwindled. Under these demographic conditions, stagnation and decline would be inevitable without immigration. Indeed, Germany now needs a steady stream of migrants just to bridge the population gap caused by its previous pharmaceutical successes. Fittingly, the German pharmaceutical industry is gaining international recognition thanks to the innovative work of two sons of immigrants who have been drawn into the country by the demographic vacuum that the industry has contributed to. Şahin and Türeci are pioneers in an area of ​​genetic research that now promises to give a new breath to the pharmaceutical industry, the European economy and the world.

• Hans-Werner Sinn is a professor of economics at the University of Munich. He was president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research and sits on the advisory board of the German Ministry of Economy.

© Project Syndicate