Scientists Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci have dedicated their lives to the field of oncology and infectious diseases, and spent years pioneering personalized immunotherapy treatments for cancer.

But amid the coronavirus pandemic, the couple's groundbreaking research in the field of modified genetic code has catapulted them into the public eye, as the brains behind the world's first effective coronavirus vaccine.

Sahin, 55, and Tureci, 53, set up BioNTech in the central German city of Mainz in 2008. On Monday the company's partner, US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, said their candidate vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing infection in volunteers.