The two co-founders and top executives of Germany's BioNTech will leave the COVID-19 vaccine maker by the end of 2026 to start again with a new company, the biotech firm announced on Tuesday.
CEO Uğur Şahin and Chief Medical Officer Özlem Türeci, the Turkish-German married couple behind the Western world's most commonly used immunization shot during the pandemic, said in a statement they were "ready to become pioneers again."
BioNTech said it had initiated a search for successors to ensure a smooth transition.
The new company will have distinct resources, operations and "funding options" to advance next-generation drugs based on mRNA, the same technology used for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Return to early discovery work
The departure marks a shift by the founders back toward exploration and early-stage development, breaking from Şahin's repeated ambitions in recent years to build a major pharmaceutical company.
BioNTech said its current drug development pipeline, including cancer therapies and the COVID-19 vaccine franchise, would be unaffected by the founders' plans to strike out on their own.
BioNTech, which developed and sold the COVID-19 shot with U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, said it plans to contribute certain rights and mRNA technologies to the new company on an arm's-length basis in exchange for a minority stake and payments contingent on scientific and commercial achievements.
Founded in 2008, BioNTech has sought since the pandemic to emphasize its focus on experimental cancer treatments and show its success with Pfizer was not a one-off.
In a major step in those efforts, Bristol Myers Squibb last year agreed to pay up to $11.1 billion in a partnership to work on a next-generation cancer immunotherapy that could take on rival Merck & Co.'s best-selling drug Keytruda.
In a separate statement, BioNTech reported a net loss of 1.14 billion euros ($1.33 billion) for last year, compared with a loss of 665 euros in 2024.
Still, despite continued spending on new drug development, the commercial success of the coronavirus shot has left BioNTech with reserves of cash and financial securities of 17.2 billion euros as per the end of 2025.
The vaccine has also received the highest scientific recognition: Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko in 2023 was among two winners of the Nobel Prize for Medicine for her work on mRNA and her contributions to BioNTech's COVID vaccine.