Moving at the speed of science: The development of the Pfizer/BioNtech mRNA vaccine for the Covid-19 pandemic

In March of 2020, as Covid-19 infection was spreading around the world, Pfizer joined forces with BioNtech to co-develop BNT162, a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine candidate for the potential prevention of Covid-19 infection. This was the second such collaboration between the two companies with the initial one focused on using the same mRNA technology platform to develop flu vaccine. However, in the case of the Covid vaccine development, the urgency was utmost as lives were being lost around the world due to the virus and there was no viable treatment available. The Covid pandemic was arguably the biggest challenge facing humanity in a generation.

Pfizer and BioNtech agreed to leverage the full resources and expertise of both companies to accelerate the development of the vaccine. The project was termed lightspeed with a highly ambitious goal of developing and gaining authorization/approval within a year. This seemed like an impossible task especially since the average time for vaccine development is typically 10-15 years and the fastest any vaccine had ever been developed was 4 years (mumps vaccine). However, within about 9 months of development, the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine had been established in a pivotal phase 3 study and emergency use of the vaccine authorized by the FDA. The talk will describe how courageous leadership, strong collaboration, and a new mRNA technology platform enabled the accelerated development of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.