<p>Germany’s most important research funding prize goes to three female researchers and seven male researchers / €2.5 million in prize money each / Award ceremony to take place in Berlin on 13 March 2024</p>
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The most promising vaccine against the coronavirus to date is also an example of the long-term value of curiosity-driven basic research and its funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation). The so-called mRNA vaccine platform, which the Mainz-based company BioNTech uses in its Covid-19 vaccine developed jointly with the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer, can be traced back to preliminary work carried out from 2006 to 2008 in a project within a DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) on cancer research at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. This in turn was also tied to previous DFG-funded research.
The project was led by the later founder and current CEO of BioNTech, Professor Dr. U?ur ?ahin, whose name and person are closely associated with the development of the BNT162b2 vaccine, which will be deployed immediately following its approval in the United Kingdom and its anticipated approval in the USA and the EU. In addition to