Meet the billionaire scientist couple who invented Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine

In the past, they focussed on developing cancer therapies, essentially by programming cells to produce therapeutic proteins. For a decade, their company had never brought a product to market. During a 2018 conference of infectious disease experts in Berlin, Prof. Sahin made a bold statement: that his company might be able to use its "messenger RNA technology" to rapidly develop a vaccine in the event of a global pandemic.