Özlem Türeci (Turkish pronunciation: [ˈœzlem ˈtyredʒi]; born 6 March 1967) is a German physician, scientist and entrepreneur.

[3] Since 2021, she has been Professor of Personalized Immunotherapy at the Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology (HI-TRON) and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

While completing her final year of studies, Türeci met her future husband, Uğur Şahin, who was working at Saarland University Hospital in Homburg.

Türeci was a staff member of the University Medical Center Mainz [de] in the special research area of immunology.

[10][29] In 2008, Türeci, her husband, and Christoph Huber founded the Mainz-based biotechnology company BioNTech,[16][30] choosing a name derived from Biopharmaceutical New Technologies.

Originally, the company focused on the development and manufacturing of active immunotherapies based on Messenger RNA (mRNA) and other technologies for a patient-specific approach to the treatment of cancer and other serious diseases.

[16][10][21][35] Along with researchers from TRON, they hired Katalin Karikó, who had developed a way to avoid triggering an inflammatory reaction when injecting an mRNA drug.

[10][23] They convinced the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, with whom they had previously begun working on an influenza vaccine, to help with development and distribution costs.

[38][10][39] Türeci credits the rapid success of the project in part to international collaboration, including Pfizer and the Chinese firm Fosun Pharma.

[44] Nominated by the Rhineland-Palatinate parliamentary group of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Türeci was a voting member of the 17th Federal Assembly for the 2022 German presidential election.

[45] On 29 March 2023, Türeci was among the guests invited to the state dinner hosted by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in honor of King Charles III at Bellevue Palace.