Why is Pfizer always mentioned in the news when it is BioNTech and Pfizer is "just" a partner? Just as the Chinese drugmaker Fosun is.
Sure credit goes to both but this "Dream Team" is BioNTech.
Sure credit goes to both but this "Dream Team" is BioNTech.
The exception is underdog stories.
It seems this is another sign of inequality. The already famous get even more fame.
“eminent scientists will often get more credit than a comparatively unknown researcher, even if their work is similar; it also means that credit will usually be given to researchers who are already famous”
In Germany, where BioNTech is based, news articles (or rather: German-language articles) either mention BioNTech exclusively or cite them as the primary player in the BioNTech / Pfizer partnership.
I would rather say nationalistic bias.
Because the fine German press never put a bombastic headlines like "Migrants invented Covid vaccine", or "Scientists of Turkish origin to save millions of German lives".
Somehow these facts are conveniently ignored, but when a person with migration heritage do something bad, it's vocally mentioned in all media, including the mainstream.
Tribalism is still deeply rooted in our DNA and the media capitalizez on that since it gets them clicks on their articles.
The opposite is true, the names of criminal migrants are usually suppressed in the media, for fear of riling up the right. The names of the BioNTech couple are everywhere, as ten seconds of research could have taught you.
https://rp-online.de/panorama/coronavirus/biontech-gruender-...
https://www.tlz.de/leben/vermischtes/biontech-gruender-diese...
https://www.express.de/koeln/corona-impfstoff-erfinder-das-l...
https://www.businessinsider.de/wissenschaft/gesundheit/biont...
Perhaps you mean the Turkish Republic?
The math still doesn't add up though if Şahin is aged 55, since at the time of his birth it really was part of Turkey.
And this is to not downplay BioNTech's role. Proving that your idea works in biotech takes some massive cohones. No doubt they took a ton of shit on their way to this point.
If I’m not mistaken the reason for the partnership is the sheer size of the clinical trials needed (very different from cancer therapies) and the speed at which they need to be run due to the pandemic. Only big pharma can do that.
https://biontech.de/how-we-translate/manufacturing
And unless I'm mistaken, they don't have any approved products on market? No doubt they have experts in house, but when you're racing to get a product to market, it can be very helpful having someone like Pfizer helping out who has successfully gotten 70+ products approved by the FDA (including several vaccines).
And interestingly, you'll even see these partnerships across big pharma. I worked for one company who was interested in bringing a gene therapy in house until we did our due diligence and realized holy shit, we know nothing about gene therapies. And this was a top 5 pharma company.
But from my perspective the regulatory process is a lot easier to navigate than the supply chain. Even if you get through all the trials, manufacturing a billion doses and distributing them across a supply chain is a special kind of hard that only companies like Pfizer can handle.
So while BioNTech doesn't need help bringing an oncology therapy to market (it just takes time because cancer is hard), it needs a company like Pfizer to actually get it to patients, both in phase 3 trials and after approvals.
For a particularly ridiculous example, see athletes in Northern Ireland; the British press often refer to them as British when they win, and Irish when they don't!
DW (German government news) refers to both companies in communication.