How Could COVID-19 Vaccines Change the World?

brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam. Here, a medical breakthrough that could save thousands of lives and effectively quashed the deadliest pandemic in more than a century is eminent, it seems, a vaccine for COVID nineteen and all it took to reach this point, besides the incalculable pain and suffering of millions of people worldwide, was the talent of a veritable army of scientists, a push in the back, and some crafty maneuvering by the U. S. Government, a good idea

that wouldn't go away, and billions and billions and billions of dollars. We spoke with Jim Richardson, the Senior Scientifical Liaison at U S Pharmacopeia, a two hundred year old scientific nonprofit that establishes federally enforced quality standards for, among other products, vaccines. He said, the amount of resources that

are being applied to this is just up sedented. Millions of dollars have never been in such a short time applied to a problem of this magnitude, even with H one and one and other things that have happened over the years. This has really spurred a lot of a variety of different platforms that people have been working on

for a long time. Dozens of companies, using several different scientific methods have been gobbling up those government dollars and quite a bit of private capital too, in order to create a vaccine to stop the coronavirus that's behind this pandemic. It's obviously important work. The virus that causes COVID nineteen has infected more than fifty six million people in the world and killed more than one point three million. It's responsible for more than two hundred and fifty thousand deaths

in the U s alone. Two of the companies in particular, that are trying to create a COVID nineteen vaccine have stood out from the competition by employing a bold and still unproven process. But this time it just might work. Before the coronavirus that causes COVID nineteen reared its spiky head early in twenty twenty, creating vaccines was a painstaking, years long process. The Mum's vaccine was rolled out in nineteen sixty seven in what's considered the fastest implementation in history.

It took four years. The vaccine for this coronavirus, which is officially called the Severe Acute Respiratory syndrome Coronavirus two or STARS cove too, is on a much much faster track for a few reasons. First, because scientists have sena virus like this one before the Star's outbreak in two thousand three that infected more than eight thousand people worldwide

and killed nearly eight hundred. The current virus, as it turns out, is eighty percent identical in genetic material to the one from two thousand three, so all researchers needed this time was to see how this virus was different from the last one. The Chinese scientists who discovered the current virus back in January mapped its genomes almost immediately and provided everyone with a text file of its complete

set of DNA. Secondly, the pair of companies leading the raise for a vaccine, Maderna, which is in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, and Visor, which is working with a German film bioin Tech, finally seemed to have perfected a once dismissed idea for a vaccine to attack the virus. This new method of making a vaccine and more on that in a moment is simply much quicker than the old one. And thirdly, well, those billions and

billions of dollars certainly lit a fire. To understand these new vaccines, it helps to first understand the old ones. Traditional vaccines typically use a weekend or attenuated form of the offending virus to nudge along a person's natural ability to combat microbes. The dead virus is injected into the body, the immune system learns what it looks like and how to fight it, and so when the real virus tax in best case scenarios, our bodies are ready for it

because they already have the antibodies to fight it. Maderna and Fiser are using something different called synthetic messenger ribonucleic acid or synthetic mRNA instead of a virus to do the same thing. Push our bodies into producing antibodies to attack and neutralize the coronavirus before it can hook onto healthy cells and make us sick. Potentially, it's game changing, life saving, but let's break it down a bit more.

You've probably heard of DNA, that double helix molecule found in every cell that contains your unique genetic code, but mRNA as its name flat out states it's a kind of messenger that carries bits of genetic code from cells nucleus out to the cells ribosomes, which use that code

to create proteins. Paula Cannon, an associate professor of microbiology at the Universe Southern California's Tech School of Medicine, put it well when she told NBC News, if DNA is the big instruction manual for the cell, then messenger RNA is like when you photocopy just one page that you need and take that into your workshop. So here's how an m RNA vaccine works. The scientists target the spikes on the coronavirus, which are actually proteins that enable it

to latch onto healthy cells. And by the way, it's called the coronavirus because these spiky protrusions look like coronas something that suggests a halo or a crown. The synthetic mRNA in the new vaccine carries the code for the

spiky protein. When introduced into a healthy body, the m RNA takes this code and joins up with the protein making ribosomes in cells to manufacture the spiky proteins that prompts our bodies to produce antibodies to destroy these strange proteins, including when they come attached to a real invading coronavirus. Without their spikes, the coronavirus can't live and reproduce, so end of story. The advantages of the m r and

A method are many. On the business end, it's cheaper to produce a bunch of m RNA strands than it is to grow a bunch of viruses, then kill them off, and then build a vaccine around them without all those labor intensive and time meeting steps. It's faster too. On the health side, m RNA is probably less dangerous than dosing people with even a manageable amount of even a weekend or dead virus, and best of all, according to latest data, it may be more effective. The disadvantages, well,

there are some. The biggest is that it's never been done before. mRNA technology, although it's been around for at least a couple of decades, has never been used in a vaccine, so it's got a lot of proving to do. Late stage testing on Maderna's and Viser's work as of early December twenty has been exceedingly promising. Both the fiser

and Maderna m RNA vaccines have proved better than nine effective. Maderna, which enrolled thirty thousand adult participants in the United States, reported the just eleven of the hundred ninety six total COVID nineteen cases in their study occurred among the vaccinated. The other five infections occurred in the placebo group. That equates to a ninety four point one percent efficacy rate. And Furthermore, none of the infected patients who had received

the vaccine developed severe symptoms. Viser saw similar results in its Phase three trial. In the trials, the vaccines also seemed to do more than simply ward off COVID nineteen. They've shown that they may reduce the rate of infection too, keeping those with the virus from spreading it to others around them. Both companies are expected to apply for something called an IMMER Agency Use Authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration. If granted, they'll ramp up production on

the vaccines, still testing as they go. If everything goes right, the general public might have access to these vaccines by the middle of but hurdles do remain. Manufacturing must increase at levels never before attempted, Shipping and storing these m RNA vaccines must be ironed out. The Fiser m RNA vaccine requires it to be stored at negative ninety four degrees fahrenheit that's negative thirty four celsius and degrades after

about five days. The temperatures of just above freezing. Maderna's supposedly can be stored at thirty six to forty six degrees fahrenheit that's two to eight degrees celsius for up to thirty days and remain stable at negative four fahrenheit

or negative twenties celsius for up to six months. Most vaccine candidates now in the late stage trials take two doses to be effective, so that has to be planned for two and determining who was first in line, what countries in which people within those countries is still being worked out. In the meantime, other companies are deep in research and development, using both m RNA and more traditional

methods to bring vaccines to market. Some fifty four vaccines are in clinical trials and humans, according to The New York Times, and at least seven are in pre clinical trials and animals. Richardson said the m RNA methods now that we have the efficacy numbers are now in the lead, but there are many different candidates. There will likely be multiple vaccines. They're licensed and available to the public. Who

knows what the landscape will be In a year. We may have five or six more to choose from, just like flu vaccines, and because you need so much, you need multiple manufacturers. The pace has been breathtaking. Faced with one of the deadliest outbreaks of disease in many lifetimes, the government and private sector have joined forces to come up with a possible answer in record time, and what we've learned may help us handle the next virus that

comes along. Richardson explained the speed, the number of vaccine development, corollary effects, bioprocessing, knowing how to scale up, the coordination with the regulatory bodies like the f d A and other organizations around the world. I think those will pay benefits for years to come. Today's episode was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Klang. For more in this amounts of other topics, visit house toffworks dot com.

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