During this online UniTalks session in English, Prof. Özlem Türeci, Chief Medical Officer at the biotechnology company BioNTech and Professor for Personalized Immunotherapy at the Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology (HI-TRON) and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, will present the latest research on mRNA vaccines.
BioNTech developed the first messenger mRNA-based vaccine approved for use against COVID-19. While this novel class of vaccines has gotten a lot of attention during the COVID-19 pandemic as the most used vaccine type to build up immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the potential of this technology goes far beyond this respiratory infectious disease. In her talk, Prof. Türeci will shed light on the long-standing research on mRNA-based immunotherapies and emerging directions of mRNA vaccines to prevent and treat other chronic diseases, such as cancer.
Learn more about:
- what mRNA vaccines are and how they work;
- how mRNA vaccines played a crucial role during the COVID-19 pandemic;
- how mRNA vaccine technologies can be applied to other disease areas such as cancer.
Prof. Türeci is the co-founder of the biotechnology company BioNTech, which in 2020 developed the first messenger mRNA-based vaccine approved for use against COVID-19. Since 2021, she is BioNTech’s chief medical officer and works as Professor of Personalized Immunotherapy at the Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology (HI-TRON) and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.