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• We became aware that the platform was already at a stage where we needed to initiate clinical development to ensure the translation of this concept. And the only way we saw was to found a company and do the clinical translation ourselves, because it was so early that we could not get any pharma company to take an interest. From the beginning, the plan was to bring it to a point where a pharma company would feel comfortable to take over and go the last mile of bringing the compound to the market. • I took over responsibility as the CEO, whereas the rest of the scientific team remained in academia and pursued the other projects to which I scientifically continued to contribute. In 2008, we recognized another platform had reached a maturity point where they had to be accelerated towards individualized vaccines, and BioNTech was founded. Ugur Sahin took over the responsibility as the CEO, and I took over a position on the advisory board, because I was still CEO of Ganymed and had to focus on it.

Gazi Social Sciences Highschool