This wonderful news delighted me last week. Let’s get to know Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin, the couple credited with discovering the vaccine that will end the COVID-19 pandemic, which has become a global pandemic and claimed millions of lives. (Source: https://www.milliyet.com.tr/gundem/ugur-sahin-ozlem-tureci-kimdir-nereli-korona-asisi-bulan-ugur-sahin-ve-ozlem-turecinin-hayati-6351300 ):
Who is Uğur Şahin?
Prof. Dr. Uğur Şahin was born in İskenderun on 19 September 1965. He moved to Germany with his family when he was four years old. His family worked at the Ford factory in Cologne. I’d like to share a photo of Uğur Şahin with his family from his childhood:
Prof. Şahin attracted attention with his interest in scientific research and experiments from a young age. Uğur Şahin, who watched the program “Immortality is Deadly” on German television about cancer, studied medicine at the University of Cologne, following Paul Ehrlich, who discovered the modern immune system in the 19th century and first developed chemotherapy against cancer, as an example. Following his professor’s suggestion, he began working at the university in Hamburg’s Saar. Prof. Şahin, who has made a name for himself through his cancer research, developed a vaccine that distinguishes between cancerous and healthy cells and destroys the former. Prof. Şahin, who has been working on antibodies that defend against diseased cells in breast, colon, lung, pancreatic, and prostate cancers, was also working with his wife, Dr. Özlem Türeci, on a vaccine against melanoma, a type of skin cancer. Prof. Şahin turned to this field following the spread of COVID-19. Prof. Şahin worked with Swiss scientist Rolf Zinkernagel, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1996. He founded the company BioNTech in 2008. Today, around 80 scientists are conducting cancer research at BioNTech.
Who is Özlem Türeci?
Born in Lastrup, Germany, in 1967, Dr. Özlem Türeci served on the Clinical and Scientific Advisory Board for ten years before becoming BioNTech’s Chief Medical Officer in 2018. The 53-year-old Türeci is also President of the Cancer Immunotherapy Association.
Türeci’s family, whose father was a doctor in Istanbul, immigrated to Germany before her birth. Türeci met her husband while working in Hamburg. “We even worked in the lab on our wedding day,” Türeci says. At Ganymed, the couple was conducting research that used modified genetic codes to train the immune system to fight cancer. In this practice, the immune system recognizes cancer cells as viruses entering the body and attempts to eliminate them. Ganymed’s sales were the largest for a medical company in Germany to date.
At BioNTech, the couple aims to revolutionize the field of vaccines using mRNA technology and is now using this method for a koronavirüs vaccine. According to Euronews, the couple, anticipating the coronavirus outbreak before it escalated into a global pandemic, decided to immediately begin vaccine research using the method they’d been developing for 25 years. They called an emergency board meeting and worked diligently to convince the executives who believed the events in China wouldn’t affect the entire world.
After reading this news and the biographies of this remarkable couple, I’d like to share what immediately came to mind:
A solution based on virus elimination
The first thing that came to mind was that for over a decade, I’d been arguing that viruses can be suppressed, but for some reason, they can’t be eliminated, and that this was the grave sin of profit-driven pharmaceutical companies. I also emphasized that because viruses can’t be eliminated, we need to regulate our immune system. When I read that BioNTech’s technique was based on exactly this, I smiled and said, “This is it!” Kudos to Dr. Özlem Türeci and Prof. Dr. İbrahim Şahin!
Also, last year, around this time, I was invited to a conference in Germany and gave a wonderful presentation. Before and after speaking at the “Renewable Energy and Environment” workshops of the Union of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMB) Higher Education Turkish Immigrants (YÖTG) in Frankfurt on 9 November 2019, I wrote an article praising the well-educated Turks in Germany I met: https://www.serhansuzer.com/tr/almanyanin-parlayan-turkleri
About a year after this event, reading about the global success of Turks in Germany truly delighted me. Then, I started thinking about what people living in our region could achieve if given the opportunity.
Problems the Same Couple Might Face in Our Country
I tried to imagine what would have happened if Özlem Türeci and İbrahim Şahin, who dedicated years to achieving this incredible success, had rolled up their sleeves to carry out the same work in their homeland, Turkey, instead of Germany. I wasn’t happy with the outcome. While not entirely limited to what I’ve written below, I think the following would have happened:
1) If they had started these studies at university, their supervising professors, the department dean, and even the rector would have tried to demote them, not only to avoid recognition, but also to prevent them from achieving great heights. They would have been subtly envied and constantly criticized by other professors who didn’t properly follow developments, lived in a bubble, and were still regurgitating knowledge from 20 years ago. Higher-upper-university officials would have cut their funding, restricted their work, and even do everything in their power to shut them down.
2) Because they were in Turkey, they wouldn’t have been able to benefit from European Union grants like they do in Germany. They might have received grants, but they would have been very limited.
3) They wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work with world-class experts. Unfortunately, Turkey still has a reputation as a backward country, and bringing and employing international experts to Turkey is more difficult than jumping over a ditch.
4) If they had attempted to collaborate with a country like Germany, which has a significant R&D culture, they would have been ostracized by the Germans. The biggest reason for this is the Germans’ continued opposition to the Turkish government, which has practically become a matter of national policy. In other words, politics is being intertwined even with science that could save humanity, eliminating the opportunity for international synergy, and hindering the opportunities for those who could make invaluable contributions.
5) They would have had difficulty purchasing materials. I’m not even going to get into the difficulties they would have faced at customs. While transporting crucial materials from Europe or anywhere else in the world, the transport company could have violated protocols, caused an accident, and damaged them. Thus, the Türeci-Şahin couple could have faced significant additional costs for resupplying or repairing the materials. The company that caused the accident could have raided their laboratory, threatened them to give them back their money, or even filed a lawsuit for enforcement.
6) If they were to accidentally qualify for a government incentive, they would become the target of their competitors and certain vested interests seeking to have the incentive revoked. They would make serious efforts to prevent the revocation of their vested rights.
7) If they had wanted to establish their own companies and continue, financing difficulties would have become even more pronounced. They would have difficulty finding capital. Turkish businesspeople, with a little capital and a self-proclaimed ambition, would mock the work being done, saying, “Abandon these efforts, are you going to save the world?” They would even demoralize them by offering financing.
8) Visionless Turkish banks (not all, but the vast majority) would say, “Forget about R&D and MARGE, talk to us about cash flow, and tell us when you’ll pay us back.” Assuming Özlem Türeci and İbrahim Şahin developed the vaccine using a technique they developed over 25 years, they wouldn’t have waited six months, let alone 25 years. They would have pulled the rug out from under them and started the process immediately.
9) Overwhelmed by the attacks from Turkish banks, the couple, with that mentality, would have resorted to borrowing money from people, even unknowingly engaging with loan sharks, and would have tried every possible method to resolve their short-term finances. I don’t even want to describe what happened next.
Ultimately, the COVID-19 vaccine that would save the world from the pandemic would have been delayed until another spring, leaving us in the hands of countries that made inconsistent statements on the matter. They, too, would have drank Turkish tea (they celebrated the good news of the vaccine’s approval by drinking Turkish tea) in the garden of the hospital canteen while waiting for their relatives hospitalized with COVID-19 in a public hospital.
To become the cradle of civilization again
Now I ask you: Will technologies like sustainability, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence, which could solve humanity’s problems, emerge from Turkey in our current climate and with this mindset?
They will.
If people like me, who have dedicated everything they have to this country, fighting all the ill-intentioned people around them to the very end and striving to continue along their own path, are supported. Winning this fight and rising will pave the way for those who come after us. If we succeed, this region will once again become the cradle of civilization, as it has in the past.
Despite all the challenges I’ve experienced, I will continue to do my best. Because within my lifetime, I want to see Turkey once again become the cradle of civilization and the apple of humanity’s eye.
Tag: health
