A reposting from May 30, 2021 which I wrote in the Promising New Coronavirus Vaccine thread for anyone interested that may have missed it. Lots of links included....
The background story of how and why vaccines like the
Nucleoside-modified messenger RNA vaccines from BioNTech and Moderna were able to be developed and produced so quickly, just when we needed them, is interesting. I've been studying the
history for awhile and find it fascinating. The speed with which they were able to be delivered to us was
not a miracle created in 2020. The speed of vaccine
development was due to a foundation of accumulated knowledge and occasional breakthroughs over many years in the lead-up to renewed and intensified interest in mRNA research which has accelerated over the past decade.
The speed of vaccine
production was due to the foresight of Congress and President Bush in creating the
Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority at the end of
2006.
BARDA was established under the
Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act of 2006 thru bipartisan efforts. When COVID-19 arrived, there was no need to develop from scratch an infrastructure across
multiple government agencies to coordinate, streamline, and accelerate the evaluation, funding, development, approval, and production of vaccines . That infrastructure already existed in BARDA and The Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise (PHEMCE) and they performed extremely well. BARDA provides biomedical manufacturers with a single point of entry into multiple federal government agencies and
facilitates the process from proposal, to evaluation, to funding, to authorization, to production and procurement, and provides any needed
infrastructure support along the way. BARDA is the agency that has managed the
portfolio and provided billions of dollars in funding and assistance to a multitude of manufacturers including vaccines.
Of course, the scientists are the first in line for my gratitude. The institutions and the government officials who created or led them, years prior to the pandemic, enabling vaccine science to advance to its current state are next in line. At the top of that list would be
NIAID led by
Anthony Fauci, M.D who was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the NIAID
Vaccine Research Center and its
Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory led by
Barney Graham, M.D., Ph.D.. Dr. Barney Graham and his research team headed by
Kizzmekia Corbett, PhD along with
Jason McLellan, PhD from the University of Texas at Austin
engineered the stabilized version of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein which lies at the heart of the immune response generated by the COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, J&J/Janssen, and Novavax.
Among the scientists making crucial breakthroughs in
mRNA vaccine development are
Katalin Karikó, PhD and
Drew Weissman, MD, PhD at the University of Pennsylvania with research grants from NIAID. Prior to their discoveries published in 2005, mRNA development had stalled as using mRNA was neither safe or effective as a tool for combating human disease. Injecting mRNA created an unwanted inflammatory
immunogenic response which was sometimes fatal in experiments with lab animals and which also destroyed the delicate mRNA before it could reach the intended cells. They discovered that by modifying certain nucleosides in mRNA, and creating a method for doing so, effectiveness increased dramatically and regulated the unwanted inflammatory immunogenic response. These modification discoveries and methods are critical in the current mRNA vaccines being used, allowing them to be both safe and effective.
To Be Continued...
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