CEO Albert Bourla: Pfizer teamed up with BioNTech on COVID-19 solution without contract

Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla has revealed that his multinational pharmaceutical corporation and biotechnology company BioNTech teamed up on COVID-19 solution without even having a contract.

Bourla was talking with CNBC senior health and science reporter Meg Tirrell at CNBC’s Healthy Returns summit, a virtual event, on Tuesday.

Tirrell had asked Bourla to share the decision making that went into forging the partnership with BioNTech to develop a vaccine using an entirely new technology and choosing that technology to pursue the vaccine.

Bourla replied, “Yes, with BioNTech we have great collaboration for the last two years, and — in the same technology. We were not working together to develop a COVID, of course, vaccine the last few years; but we were working together to develop a flu vaccine,” according to the unofficial transcript that US and Global News received from NBCUniversal, CNBC’s owner.

He added that since in the flu there are different strains every year and the technology has tremendous speed in the way that you can go from a new strain all the way to manufacturing a vaccine, it would be ideal and would actually disrupt the flu market.

“Now immediately, when we realized that COVID-19 is about to become pandemic and the size of this disease, we immediately jumped into it and we thought what can we offer as Pfizer,” said Bourla. “And we looked at the vaccines, we looked at the therapies of new molecules, antivirals, and also we looked at therapies from our existing portfolio. So BioNTech was the first one that came to mind, because the technology is ideal for something like that.”

He then revealed, “So immediately we jumped into place with BioNTech. You have to know that we move with the speed of light. Actually, this is the name of our project. We did that without even having a contract, both parties.”

Bourla explained that both the companies just agreed that that needs to be done and that the world was waiting.

“Before signing a contract, they started selling their strains and we started making investments, and then eventually we signed a letter of intent, and then only after we were already well into this collaboration, eventually we signed the contract between the two of us,” he added. “And I hope that the fact that — the work will bring a solution.”

Image credit - Coolcaesar (CC BY-SA 4.0)