Meet the man betting $1 billion that Pfizer can deliver a vaccine by this fall:
n the middle of March,
Says Mikael Dolsten, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer: “He challenged the team to aim for a moon shot–like goal—to have millions of doses of vaccine in the hands of vulnerable populations before the end of the year.” Pfizer’s most prominent effort is its work with Mainz, Germany–based BioNTech, an innovative $120 million outfit that is mostly known for making cancer medications. The resulting experimental Covid-19 vaccine works with messenger RNA, a bleeding-edge technology that has never resulted in a successful treatment. Pfizer is hoping to get emergency-use authorization from the U.S. government for the vaccine by October.
Şahin built BioNTech to hack human cells to go after diseases, particularly cancer, and he thought similar tech might work against the coronavirus. Soon after, Şahin spoke to Thomas Strüngmann, the German pharma billionaire who for years has backed Şahin and his wife, immunologist Özlem Türeci, in their ventures. “He said, ‘This is a big disaster.’ He said the schools will be closed, that this will be a pandemic,” Strüngmann says, referring to Şahin.
Pfizer was already comfortable with BioNTech. Two years ago, the two companies inked a $425 million deal to develop an mRNA flu vaccine. Pfizer was intrigued by the potential of an mRNA approach to short-circuit the process of developing a vaccine for a new strain of the flu every year. That same flexibility and speed appealed to Bourla when it came to working with a partner on a potential vaccine for Covid-19.
At the same time, Bourla made the decision to spend $1 billion on the project, so if the vaccine works, it can be made available this autumn. Pfizer will also be on the hook to pay BioNTech an additional $563 million if everything goes according to plan. “A billion dollars is not going to break us. And, by the way, I don’t plan to lose it. I plan to make sure we use this product,” Bourla says. “You never know until you see the data.
“It’s not easy. As a matter of fact, it has never been done before—I can’t give you a probability,” Jansen says. “An unprecedented crisis, such as the ongoing pandemic, requires unprecedented action. Albert was the first to see that and act on it, and to provide the support and the environment for us to think and act boldly.
Bourla’s last job before ascending to the C-suite was as head of Pfizer’s innovation group. He approached the position as though he was running a life-sciences venture capital firm. He forced each of his six business units, which included oncology, vaccines and rare diseases, to compete for financing. “I was telling all of them, ‘I’m your boss, I am private equity, the one who has the better ideas will get the money,’ ” he says.
One day in the midst of this retooling, Pfizer director Scott Gottlieb, who used run the FDA, left the company’s Manhattan headquarters, and within hours his fears were coming to pass: Reports were emerging from California indicating community spread in America.
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