Inside the Race to Develop a Coronavirus Vaccine

development around the world, but the process remains slow. Well, many things have changed about how to develop vaccines, such as being able to target the DNA and RNA of the viruses in quick fashion, the rest of the process, testing in humans and also manufacturing for wide use, remains very slow. That is why we might still be a year away from an effective vaccine some months. Supermannian contributor to The Guardian long Reads, joins us for the work

behind the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Thanks for joining us a month happy. I wanted to continue talking about coronavirus COVID nineteen, and one of the things that everybody is racing for to get completed is a vaccine. We've been told for a while now, since this whole pandemic started, that it was going to take twelve to eighteen months something like that to really get an effective vaccine. And because it just takes a long time, the human trials,

the studying of it takes a long time. What has changed is actually being able to get vaccine candidates. Uh, that's changed, and it's much much quicker than it's been in the past. Currently, there's at least forty three COVID nineteen vaccines in development around the world, and everybody is racing to to do this. There's one vaccine that was made in sixty three days by the American biotech firm nay More Moderna, and they're actually doing human trials already

though started on March sixteen. So some tell us a little bit about the vaccine making process and and and how it's changed over the years as well well. So the vaccine, you know, the principle of vaccination hasn't changed at all, right, I've any idea is to get um your immune system to record eyes a virus or a

bacteria without actually making you sick. So what they used to do earlier was they used to weaken a virus or a bacteria and they would introduce that into your body and your immune system would recognize it and it would generate all these antibodies that tend to stay in your system, so the body learns to fight this germ. And then when you actually get infected with a full strength strain of this pathogen, your body can fight it off. It has all these antibodies and t sales and you

can fight these pathogens. So that's how they used to do it earlier, and that was the case for you know, most of the twentieth century. They would take these viruses of these bacteria and they would put them in cell cultures, tissue cultures and labs, and they would try to weaken these trains. And sometimes it was a really tricky process to do. I mean, it's very difficult if you aren't quite um, you know, in possession of the kind of

sensitive equipment that we have right now. The first step forward from that was when scientists realized that, look, you don't have to put the entire via it us into a body. You can just put a part of the virus or a part of the bacteria into the body

and the antibodies will still be generated. So they would take like some molecules of a particular toxin that a bacteria would release, or they would take a part of the shell on the outside that the bacteria or the virus have, and they would introduce these molecules into our bodies. And that's you know, already sort of thousands of times smaller than the bacteria or the virus itself, which are tiny.

And then what's happened over the last few years, and really, I mean, you know, this has been development for a while, but genetic technology has only come up to a particular speed and efficiency and power over the last few years.

Is that instead of making these molecules, you know, the toxin or the protein shell or the outside, instead of making them in labs or in factories, what scientists have learned to do is to take short snatches of the genetic material of the bacteria or the IRUs itself, which you know, has the instructions coded to produce these toxins or these protein shells and so on, and put the genetic material directly into a body, into a vaccine, and

use ourselves, our bodies as factories for making these molecules. So you've gone from introducing the whole pathogen to introducing a part of the pathogen, to now introducing the genetic material that codes for a part of the pathogen, so you're just putting the gene you know, you're synthesizing these genes outside in a lab and you're putting those genes into your body. Now I should mention that this last bit, the vaccines that use DNA or RNA, these genetic material vaccines,

you know, these are completely unproven. You know, they've they've been sort of tested in labs, um there's been a couple of human trials, but we haven't ever had a real world vaccine out there that works on this principle yet. So it's really fast to do, but we still don't know whether it's and work, if it will go through human trials and succeed and get out on the market

for all of us to use. And that's one of the interesting parts about this is that, as you were mentioning beforehand, UH scientists had to use parts of the actual virus they were dealing with that organism there. And now a lot of this stuff is being done on computer modeling. You know. After China release the full genome of the coronavirus of COVID nineteen, scientists were immediately getting onto it to start seeing what they can do, what they could use to try to make effective vaccines for it.

That's right. I mean, I think, like because sequencing the genome of a small organism like a bacteria aut virus

is now so quick. You know, they have that, They had that online and like mid January, and as I say in my story, I mean that's sort of like a startup stol for all these scientists everywhere to look at the genome and try to understand what parts of this virus, uh they might want to introduce them to our body, and what parts of the genome code for those sections of the virus, the sub units of the virus, and so really that that's the you know, that's the

powerhouse beginning to this entire process. And then, as you say quite rightly, I mean a lot of the work happens in computers right up until they actually synthesize these genes. Everything is happening online. All this modeling is happening with software, and then they get these genes back and then they start to deal with real world testing on mice and other animals. And this is the part that takes obviously

the longest part. Now, I mean we're just talking about how quickly now they can get this candidates, they can figure something out. But the real world testing, the human trials, and then the manufacturing of this this is the slow part. So when people say, hey, twelve to eighty months, this is the bulk of the time right there. Yeah, I mean, you know, both of these things are slow. So human trials can only proceed at the lay at the rate

of human physiology. Right. We can't speed our systems up to react quicker or slower to give scientists results, So it has to go just as slow as as it can go. Um. But but the problem also is human physiology is so complicated. Uh, we can test these vaccines as much as we want on computers or in mice, but when it comes to putting something into a human body, it's impossible to predict the kind of side effects it will have, what kind of dosage will work, whether it

will work at all. You know, it's impossible to predict all of this stuff. So that takes takes time. And then the second part of it is just sort of economics in a sense. It's business. Uh, you need a big drug company with the equipment and factories and so on to manufacture these huge doses of vaccines, but very Often companies don't want to touch vaccines unless they're sure

there's like a profit margin in there for them. So if they you know, if we come through human trials for this vaccine, say by January next year, let's assume I don't know if that's the right time scale, but you know, by that time, coronavirus everywhere around the world might have shrunk, the pandemic won't quite be as virulent as it is now, and so companies at that point might look at us and say, well, you know, we don't want to touch this as a product. I mean,

there's not many people who need to be vaccinated. Most of the world has immunity to it. So what's going to happen? Then we have no way of knowing. So there's so many moving parts in both how complex human physiology is and in the economics of this. That's why it's going to take twelve to eighteen months if we're lucky, for a vaccine to be out on the market. And

we know that's true because it's happened before. There were vaccines in the process for stars when that was going around, and because you know, by the time they were getting around to getting something that was viable. Everything had calmed down with stars, so funding for that stuff dried up very quickly. So I think this I'm I'm hoping this might be a different case because there's a lot more

eyes on this. You know, it's this whole big thing that everybody's kind of paying attention to, so hopefully it's different. But you know, we've gone through this process before. Um you know, some of the experts have said that for the cost of this vaccine to produce and manufacture enough to maybe be the pandemic, it could be about three billion dollars. But you know, as you mentioned, everything is constantly changing with all of this. For this story, you

you actually spoke to a Canadian pathologist. His name is Jonathan Heeney. He works with a company who's also working on a possible vaccine. What can you tell us about their work and you know what you're learning from them? Well, so um perious company, which is called deal sin Vax,

is based here in Cambridge, England, where I live. And you know, it's just the strangeness of the world right now that they're about a twelve minute bicycle right from where I live, and I was unable to visit because you know, he can't take the risk of outsiders coming in possibly carrying a virus and infecting his stuff, infecting him. So we had to speak on zoom on like video conference, even though he's so close to what I live. And they, you know, like a lot of other UH labs and

universities and you know, companies around the world. They started work as soon as genomal published in January twelve or just after. UM. What they're doing is kind of different. I think it's more ambitious. UH. They're trying to build this vaccine that will not just work against this coronavirus disease COVID nineteen, but also against you know, many members of the family of coronaviruses. You know, so sours for example,

was caused by a coronavirus as well. And so their idea is to get this vaccine, UH, to replicate within us the production of common parts of all these viruses. So every virus has something called a spike protein on the outside of the shell, so they'll make maybe you know, the vaccine will come into the human body and it will make a part of the spike protein that is common across all these coronaviruses. Maybe it'll make two or three out of four other sections of the same viruses.

So there's two or three or four common elements floating around. And the theory is that the antibodies that our body releases will then be able to eventually work against all of these coronaviruses. And this is his thing, right, he needs things. He has a platform where he uh he's done this for philo viruses, so um West Nile virus for example, that diseases called caused by a fire of philo virus, and he has a platform for that. He's working on a universal flu vaccine which will hopefully work

against every kind of flu out there. So that's his that's his big m o. And uh, you know, I mean, as I said, as he says, it's early days. They're still doing trials on mice. Uh. And he you know, he says quite um, quite clearly that the vaccine field has his graveyard full of dead vaccine candidates. So he's quite realistic about his chances. But it's a it's an ambitious thing to try for. And I I had a great time talking to him. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing.

And at the same time, you know, you mentioned the article talking to a bunch of people. Excuse me, you mentioned the article talking to a bunch of people. We have to avoid overpromising because if there ever was something to go wrong and accident with these vaccines, that's why we needed take the time to do the clinical trials and really get all the data. You know, it could turn people off to getting it, you know, if there's

something that goes wrong. You know, while it might help to avert COVID nineteen or other coronaviruses, people might not want it after that. So it's a very tricky situation. And I know the United States has fast tracked a lot of things. We're doing a lot of trials and you're trying to do it very quickly, but we've got to take the time to get it right some months. Supermanian contributor to The Guardian long Reads. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks Oscar, I'm Oscar Ramirez, and

this has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.