Speaker 1: It's Monday, April six. I'm Oscar Ramires from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily
Speaker 1: coronavirus update while we brace ourselves to make it through
Speaker 1: this time. Right now, the scientific community around the world
Speaker 1: is in a race to develop a vaccine for COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: There are currently at least forty three different vaccines and
Speaker 1: development around the world, but the process remains slow. Well,
Speaker 1: many things have changed about how to develop vaccines, such
Speaker 1: as being able to target the DNA and RNA of
Speaker 1: the viruses in quick fashion, the rest of the process,
Speaker 1: testing in humans and also manufacturing for wide use, remains
Speaker 1: very slow. That is why we might still be a
Speaker 1: year away from an effective vaccine some months. Supermannian contributor
Speaker 1: to The Guardian long Reads, joins us for the work
Speaker 1: behind the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us a month happy. I wanted to continue talking
Speaker 1: about coronavirus COVID nineteen, and one of the things that
Speaker 1: everybody is racing for to get completed is a vaccine.
Speaker 1: We've been told for a while now, since this whole
Speaker 1: pandemic started, that it was going to take twelve to
Speaker 1: eighteen months something like that to really get an effective vaccine.
Speaker 1: And because it just takes a long time, the human trials,
Speaker 1: the studying of it takes a long time. What has
Speaker 1: changed is actually being able to get vaccine candidates. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's changed, and it's much much quicker than it's been
Speaker 1: in the past. Currently, there's at least forty three COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen vaccines in development around the world, and everybody is
Speaker 1: racing to to do this. There's one vaccine that was
Speaker 1: made in sixty three days by the American biotech firm
Speaker 1: nay More Moderna, and they're actually doing human trials already
Speaker 1: though started on March sixteen. So some tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about the vaccine making process and and and
Speaker 1: how it's changed over the years as well well. So
Speaker 1: the vaccine, you know, the principle of vaccination hasn't changed
Speaker 1: at all, right, I've any idea is to get um
Speaker 1: your immune system to record eyes a virus or a
Speaker 1: bacteria without actually making you sick. So what they used
Speaker 1: to do earlier was they used to weaken a virus
Speaker 1: or a bacteria and they would introduce that into your
Speaker 1: body and your immune system would recognize it and it
Speaker 1: would generate all these antibodies that tend to stay in
Speaker 1: your system, so the body learns to fight this germ.
Speaker 1: And then when you actually get infected with a full
Speaker 1: strength strain of this pathogen, your body can fight it off.
Speaker 1: It has all these antibodies and t sales and you
Speaker 1: can fight these pathogens. So that's how they used to
Speaker 1: do it earlier, and that was the case for you know,
Speaker 1: most of the twentieth century. They would take these viruses
Speaker 1: of these bacteria and they would put them in cell cultures,
Speaker 1: tissue cultures and labs, and they would try to weaken
Speaker 1: these trains. And sometimes it was a really tricky process
Speaker 1: to do. I mean, it's very difficult if you aren't
Speaker 1: quite um, you know, in possession of the kind of
Speaker 1: sensitive equipment that we have right now. The first step
Speaker 1: forward from that was when scientists realized that, look, you
Speaker 1: don't have to put the entire via it us into
Speaker 1: a body. You can just put a part of the
Speaker 1: virus or a part of the bacteria into the body
Speaker 1: and the antibodies will still be generated. So they would
Speaker 1: take like some molecules of a particular toxin that a
Speaker 1: bacteria would release, or they would take a part of
Speaker 1: the shell on the outside that the bacteria or the
Speaker 1: virus have, and they would introduce these molecules into our bodies.
Speaker 1: And that's you know, already sort of thousands of times
Speaker 1: smaller than the bacteria or the virus itself, which are tiny.
Speaker 1: And then what's happened over the last few years, and really,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, this has been development for a while,
Speaker 1: but genetic technology has only come up to a particular
Speaker 1: speed and efficiency and power over the last few years.
Speaker 1: Is that instead of making these molecules, you know, the
Speaker 1: toxin or the protein shell or the outside, instead of
Speaker 1: making them in labs or in factories, what scientists have
Speaker 1: learned to do is to take short snatches of the
Speaker 1: genetic material of the bacteria or the IRUs itself, which
Speaker 1: you know, has the instructions coded to produce these toxins
Speaker 1: or these protein shells and so on, and put the
Speaker 1: genetic material directly into a body, into a vaccine, and
Speaker 1: use ourselves, our bodies as factories for making these molecules.
Speaker 1: So you've gone from introducing the whole pathogen to introducing
Speaker 1: a part of the pathogen, to now introducing the genetic
Speaker 1: material that codes for a part of the pathogen, so
Speaker 1: you're just putting the gene you know, you're synthesizing these
Speaker 1: genes outside in a lab and you're putting those genes
Speaker 1: into your body. Now I should mention that this last bit,
Speaker 1: the vaccines that use DNA or RNA, these genetic material vaccines,
Speaker 1: you know, these are completely unproven. You know, they've they've
Speaker 1: been sort of tested in labs, um there's been a
Speaker 1: couple of human trials, but we haven't ever had a
Speaker 1: real world vaccine out there that works on this principle yet.
Speaker 1: So it's really fast to do, but we still don't
Speaker 1: know whether it's and work, if it will go through
Speaker 1: human trials and succeed and get out on the market
Speaker 1: for all of us to use. And that's one of
Speaker 1: the interesting parts about this is that, as you were
Speaker 1: mentioning beforehand, UH scientists had to use parts of the
Speaker 1: actual virus they were dealing with that organism there. And
Speaker 1: now a lot of this stuff is being done on
Speaker 1: computer modeling. You know. After China release the full genome
Speaker 1: of the coronavirus of COVID nineteen, scientists were immediately getting
Speaker 1: onto it to start seeing what they can do, what
Speaker 1: they could use to try to make effective vaccines for it.
Speaker 1: That's right. I mean, I think, like because sequencing the
Speaker 1: genome of a small organism like a bacteria aut virus
Speaker 1: is now so quick. You know, they have that, They
Speaker 1: had that online and like mid January, and as I
Speaker 1: say in my story, I mean that's sort of like
Speaker 1: a startup stol for all these scientists everywhere to look
Speaker 1: at the genome and try to understand what parts of
Speaker 1: this virus, uh they might want to introduce them to
Speaker 1: our body, and what parts of the genome code for
Speaker 1: those sections of the virus, the sub units of the virus,
Speaker 1: and so really that that's the you know, that's the
Speaker 1: powerhouse beginning to this entire process. And then, as you
Speaker 1: say quite rightly, I mean a lot of the work
Speaker 1: happens in computers right up until they actually synthesize these genes.
Speaker 1: Everything is happening online. All this modeling is happening with software,
Speaker 1: and then they get these genes back and then they
Speaker 1: start to deal with real world testing on mice and
Speaker 1: other animals. And this is the part that takes obviously
Speaker 1: the longest part. Now, I mean we're just talking about
Speaker 1: how quickly now they can get this candidates, they can
Speaker 1: figure something out. But the real world testing, the human trials,
Speaker 1: and then the manufacturing of this this is the slow part.
Speaker 1: So when people say, hey, twelve to eighty months, this
Speaker 1: is the bulk of the time right there. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, both of these things are slow. So human
Speaker 1: trials can only proceed at the lay at the rate
Speaker 1: of human physiology. Right. We can't speed our systems up
Speaker 1: to react quicker or slower to give scientists results, So
Speaker 1: it has to go just as slow as as it
Speaker 1: can go. Um. But but the problem also is human
Speaker 1: physiology is so complicated. Uh, we can test these vaccines
Speaker 1: as much as we want on computers or in mice,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to putting something into a human body,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to predict the kind of side effects it
Speaker 1: will have, what kind of dosage will work, whether it
Speaker 1: will work at all. You know, it's impossible to predict
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. So that takes takes time. And
Speaker 1: then the second part of it is just sort of
Speaker 1: economics in a sense. It's business. Uh, you need a
Speaker 1: big drug company with the equipment and factories and so
Speaker 1: on to manufacture these huge doses of vaccines, but very
Speaker 1: Often companies don't want to touch vaccines unless they're sure
Speaker 1: there's like a profit margin in there for them. So
Speaker 1: if they you know, if we come through human trials
Speaker 1: for this vaccine, say by January next year, let's assume
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the right time scale, but
Speaker 1: you know, by that time, coronavirus everywhere around the world
Speaker 1: might have shrunk, the pandemic won't quite be as virulent
Speaker 1: as it is now, and so companies at that point
Speaker 1: might look at us and say, well, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't want to touch this as a product. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's not many people who need to be vaccinated. Most
Speaker 1: of the world has immunity to it. So what's going
Speaker 1: to happen? Then we have no way of knowing. So
Speaker 1: there's so many moving parts in both how complex human
Speaker 1: physiology is and in the economics of this. That's why
Speaker 1: it's going to take twelve to eighteen months if we're lucky,
Speaker 1: for a vaccine to be out on the market. And
Speaker 1: we know that's true because it's happened before. There were
Speaker 1: vaccines in the process for stars when that was going around,
Speaker 1: and because you know, by the time they were getting
Speaker 1: around to getting something that was viable. Everything had calmed
Speaker 1: down with stars, so funding for that stuff dried up
Speaker 1: very quickly. So I think this I'm I'm hoping this
Speaker 1: might be a different case because there's a lot more
Speaker 1: eyes on this. You know, it's this whole big thing
Speaker 1: that everybody's kind of paying attention to, so hopefully it's different.
Speaker 1: But you know, we've gone through this process before. Um
Speaker 1: you know, some of the experts have said that for
Speaker 1: the cost of this vaccine to produce and manufacture enough
Speaker 1: to maybe be the pandemic, it could be about three
Speaker 1: billion dollars. But you know, as you mentioned, everything is
Speaker 1: constantly changing with all of this. For this story, you
Speaker 1: you actually spoke to a Canadian pathologist. His name is
Speaker 1: Jonathan Heeney. He works with a company who's also working
Speaker 1: on a possible vaccine. What can you tell us about
Speaker 1: their work and you know what you're learning from them? Well,
Speaker 1: so um perious company, which is called deal sin Vax,
Speaker 1: is based here in Cambridge, England, where I live. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's just the strangeness of the world right
Speaker 1: now that they're about a twelve minute bicycle right from
Speaker 1: where I live, and I was unable to visit because
Speaker 1: you know, he can't take the risk of outsiders coming
Speaker 1: in possibly carrying a virus and infecting his stuff, infecting him.
Speaker 1: So we had to speak on zoom on like video conference,
Speaker 1: even though he's so close to what I live. And they,
Speaker 1: you know, like a lot of other UH labs and
Speaker 1: universities and you know, companies around the world. They started
Speaker 1: work as soon as genomal published in January twelve or
Speaker 1: just after. UM. What they're doing is kind of different.
Speaker 1: I think it's more ambitious. UH. They're trying to build
Speaker 1: this vaccine that will not just work against this coronavirus
Speaker 1: disease COVID nineteen, but also against you know, many members
Speaker 1: of the family of coronaviruses. You know, so sours for example,
Speaker 1: was caused by a coronavirus as well. And so their
Speaker 1: idea is to get this vaccine, UH, to replicate within
Speaker 1: us the production of common parts of all these viruses.
Speaker 1: So every virus has something called a spike protein on
Speaker 1: the outside of the shell, so they'll make maybe you know,
Speaker 1: the vaccine will come into the human body and it
Speaker 1: will make a part of the spike protein that is
Speaker 1: common across all these coronaviruses. Maybe it'll make two or
Speaker 1: three out of four other sections of the same viruses.
Speaker 1: So there's two or three or four common elements floating around.
Speaker 1: And the theory is that the antibodies that our body
Speaker 1: releases will then be able to eventually work against all
Speaker 1: of these coronaviruses. And this is his thing, right, he
Speaker 1: needs things. He has a platform where he uh he's
Speaker 1: done this for philo viruses, so um West Nile virus
Speaker 1: for example, that diseases called caused by a fire of
Speaker 1: philo virus, and he has a platform for that. He's
Speaker 1: working on a universal flu vaccine which will hopefully work
Speaker 1: against every kind of flu out there. So that's his
Speaker 1: that's his big m o. And uh, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: as I said, as he says, it's early days. They're
Speaker 1: still doing trials on mice. Uh. And he you know,
Speaker 1: he says quite um, quite clearly that the vaccine field
Speaker 1: has his graveyard full of dead vaccine candidates. So he's
Speaker 1: quite realistic about his chances. But it's a it's an
Speaker 1: ambitious thing to try for. And I I had a
Speaker 1: great time talking to him. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, you know, you mentioned the
Speaker 1: article talking to a bunch of people. Excuse me, you
Speaker 1: mentioned the article talking to a bunch of people. We
Speaker 1: have to avoid overpromising because if there ever was something
Speaker 1: to go wrong and accident with these vaccines, that's why
Speaker 1: we needed take the time to do the clinical trials
Speaker 1: and really get all the data. You know, it could
Speaker 1: turn people off to getting it, you know, if there's
Speaker 1: something that goes wrong. You know, while it might help
Speaker 1: to avert COVID nineteen or other coronaviruses, people might not
Speaker 1: want it after that. So it's a very tricky situation.
Speaker 1: And I know the United States has fast tracked a
Speaker 1: lot of things. We're doing a lot of trials and
Speaker 1: you're trying to do it very quickly, but we've got
Speaker 1: to take the time to get it right some months.
Speaker 1: Supermanian contributor to The Guardian long Reads. Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Thanks Oscar, I'm Oscar Ramirez, and
Speaker 1: this has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that.
Speaker 1: For today's big news stories, you can check me out
Speaker 1: on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So
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Speaker 1: your podcasts.