1
00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:06,480
Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey

2
00:00:06,519 --> 00:00:10,719
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam. Here, a medical breakthrough that

3
00:00:10,760 --> 00:00:14,280
Speaker 1: could save thousands of lives and effectively quashed the deadliest

4
00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:17,440
Speaker 1: pandemic in more than a century is eminent, it seems,

5
00:00:17,880 --> 00:00:22,040
Speaker 1: a vaccine for COVID nineteen and all it took to

6
00:00:22,079 --> 00:00:26,040
Speaker 1: reach this point, besides the incalculable pain and suffering of

7
00:00:26,079 --> 00:00:29,560
Speaker 1: millions of people worldwide, was the talent of a veritable

8
00:00:29,640 --> 00:00:32,080
Speaker 1: army of scientists, a push in the back, and some

9
00:00:32,159 --> 00:00:35,120
Speaker 1: crafty maneuvering by the U. S. Government, a good idea

10
00:00:35,159 --> 00:00:39,440
Speaker 1: that wouldn't go away, and billions and billions and billions

11
00:00:39,600 --> 00:00:45,040
Speaker 1: of dollars. We spoke with Jim Richardson, the Senior Scientifical

12
00:00:45,040 --> 00:00:48,360
Speaker 1: Liaison at U S Pharmacopeia, a two hundred year old

13
00:00:48,360 --> 00:00:52,960
Speaker 1: scientific nonprofit that establishes federally enforced quality standards for, among

14
00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:57,760
Speaker 1: other products, vaccines. He said, the amount of resources that

15
00:00:57,800 --> 00:01:01,400
Speaker 1: are being applied to this is just up sedented. Millions

16
00:01:01,400 --> 00:01:03,720
Speaker 1: of dollars have never been in such a short time

17
00:01:03,840 --> 00:01:06,840
Speaker 1: applied to a problem of this magnitude, even with H

18
00:01:06,920 --> 00:01:08,880
Speaker 1: one and one and other things that have happened over

19
00:01:08,920 --> 00:01:11,920
Speaker 1: the years. This has really spurred a lot of a

20
00:01:12,040 --> 00:01:14,600
Speaker 1: variety of different platforms that people have been working on

21
00:01:14,720 --> 00:01:20,119
Speaker 1: for a long time. Dozens of companies, using several different

22
00:01:20,120 --> 00:01:23,760
Speaker 1: scientific methods have been gobbling up those government dollars and

23
00:01:23,880 --> 00:01:26,360
Speaker 1: quite a bit of private capital too, in order to

24
00:01:26,440 --> 00:01:30,440
Speaker 1: create a vaccine to stop the coronavirus that's behind this pandemic.

25
00:01:31,160 --> 00:01:35,080
Speaker 1: It's obviously important work. The virus that causes COVID nineteen

26
00:01:35,120 --> 00:01:37,679
Speaker 1: has infected more than fifty six million people in the

27
00:01:37,720 --> 00:01:41,000
Speaker 1: world and killed more than one point three million. It's

28
00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:43,680
Speaker 1: responsible for more than two hundred and fifty thousand deaths

29
00:01:43,680 --> 00:01:48,200
Speaker 1: in the U s alone. Two of the companies in particular,

30
00:01:48,360 --> 00:01:51,040
Speaker 1: that are trying to create a COVID nineteen vaccine have

31
00:01:51,080 --> 00:01:53,960
Speaker 1: stood out from the competition by employing a bold and

32
00:01:54,120 --> 00:01:58,520
Speaker 1: still unproven process. But this time it just might work.

33
00:02:00,440 --> 00:02:04,440
Speaker 1: Before the coronavirus that causes COVID nineteen reared its spiky

34
00:02:04,520 --> 00:02:08,480
Speaker 1: head early in twenty twenty, creating vaccines was a painstaking,

35
00:02:08,760 --> 00:02:12,120
Speaker 1: years long process. The Mum's vaccine was rolled out in

36
00:02:12,200 --> 00:02:15,920
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven in what's considered the fastest implementation in history.

37
00:02:16,440 --> 00:02:21,400
Speaker 1: It took four years. The vaccine for this coronavirus, which

38
00:02:21,480 --> 00:02:25,560
Speaker 1: is officially called the Severe Acute Respiratory syndrome Coronavirus two

39
00:02:25,680 --> 00:02:29,120
Speaker 1: or STARS cove too, is on a much much faster

40
00:02:29,240 --> 00:02:33,840
Speaker 1: track for a few reasons. First, because scientists have sena

41
00:02:33,919 --> 00:02:37,160
Speaker 1: virus like this one before the Star's outbreak in two

42
00:02:37,200 --> 00:02:40,200
Speaker 1: thousand three that infected more than eight thousand people worldwide

43
00:02:40,240 --> 00:02:43,520
Speaker 1: and killed nearly eight hundred. The current virus, as it

44
00:02:43,560 --> 00:02:46,760
Speaker 1: turns out, is eighty percent identical in genetic material to

45
00:02:46,800 --> 00:02:50,640
Speaker 1: the one from two thousand three, so all researchers needed

46
00:02:50,680 --> 00:02:53,040
Speaker 1: this time was to see how this virus was different

47
00:02:53,160 --> 00:02:56,640
Speaker 1: from the last one. The Chinese scientists who discovered the

48
00:02:56,680 --> 00:03:00,640
Speaker 1: current virus back in January mapped its genomes almost immediately

49
00:03:00,919 --> 00:03:03,720
Speaker 1: and provided everyone with a text file of its complete

50
00:03:03,760 --> 00:03:08,720
Speaker 1: set of DNA. Secondly, the pair of companies leading the

51
00:03:08,800 --> 00:03:11,800
Speaker 1: raise for a vaccine, Maderna, which is in partnership with

52
00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:14,760
Speaker 1: the National Institutes of Health, and Visor, which is working

53
00:03:14,760 --> 00:03:17,920
Speaker 1: with a German film bioin Tech, finally seemed to have

54
00:03:17,960 --> 00:03:21,359
Speaker 1: perfected a once dismissed idea for a vaccine to attack

55
00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:25,280
Speaker 1: the virus. This new method of making a vaccine and

56
00:03:25,320 --> 00:03:28,160
Speaker 1: more on that in a moment is simply much quicker

57
00:03:28,200 --> 00:03:33,120
Speaker 1: than the old one. And thirdly, well, those billions and

58
00:03:33,160 --> 00:03:38,280
Speaker 1: billions of dollars certainly lit a fire. To understand these

59
00:03:38,320 --> 00:03:41,680
Speaker 1: new vaccines, it helps to first understand the old ones.

60
00:03:42,400 --> 00:03:46,480
Speaker 1: Traditional vaccines typically use a weekend or attenuated form of

61
00:03:46,520 --> 00:03:50,320
Speaker 1: the offending virus to nudge along a person's natural ability

62
00:03:50,360 --> 00:03:54,640
Speaker 1: to combat microbes. The dead virus is injected into the body,

63
00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:57,280
Speaker 1: the immune system learns what it looks like and how

64
00:03:57,320 --> 00:04:00,360
Speaker 1: to fight it, and so when the real virus tax

65
00:04:00,680 --> 00:04:03,520
Speaker 1: in best case scenarios, our bodies are ready for it

66
00:04:03,640 --> 00:04:07,800
Speaker 1: because they already have the antibodies to fight it. Maderna

67
00:04:07,840 --> 00:04:12,560
Speaker 1: and Fiser are using something different called synthetic messenger ribonucleic

68
00:04:12,600 --> 00:04:16,880
Speaker 1: acid or synthetic mRNA instead of a virus to do

69
00:04:16,960 --> 00:04:20,560
Speaker 1: the same thing. Push our bodies into producing antibodies to

70
00:04:20,600 --> 00:04:24,200
Speaker 1: attack and neutralize the coronavirus before it can hook onto

71
00:04:24,200 --> 00:04:28,839
Speaker 1: healthy cells and make us sick. Potentially, it's game changing,

72
00:04:29,240 --> 00:04:32,560
Speaker 1: life saving, but let's break it down a bit more.

73
00:04:33,839 --> 00:04:37,960
Speaker 1: You've probably heard of DNA, that double helix molecule found

74
00:04:37,960 --> 00:04:42,400
Speaker 1: in every cell that contains your unique genetic code, but

75
00:04:42,920 --> 00:04:46,279
Speaker 1: mRNA as its name flat out states it's a kind

76
00:04:46,320 --> 00:04:49,440
Speaker 1: of messenger that carries bits of genetic code from cells

77
00:04:49,520 --> 00:04:53,320
Speaker 1: nucleus out to the cells ribosomes, which use that code

78
00:04:53,480 --> 00:04:59,240
Speaker 1: to create proteins. Paula Cannon, an associate professor of microbiology

79
00:04:59,320 --> 00:05:02,760
Speaker 1: at the Universe Southern California's Tech School of Medicine, put

80
00:05:02,760 --> 00:05:06,680
Speaker 1: it well when she told NBC News, if DNA is

81
00:05:06,720 --> 00:05:10,440
Speaker 1: the big instruction manual for the cell, then messenger RNA

82
00:05:10,880 --> 00:05:13,479
Speaker 1: is like when you photocopy just one page that you

83
00:05:13,520 --> 00:05:18,480
Speaker 1: need and take that into your workshop. So here's how

84
00:05:18,520 --> 00:05:23,240
Speaker 1: an m RNA vaccine works. The scientists target the spikes

85
00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:26,760
Speaker 1: on the coronavirus, which are actually proteins that enable it

86
00:05:26,800 --> 00:05:29,839
Speaker 1: to latch onto healthy cells. And by the way, it's

87
00:05:29,880 --> 00:05:34,880
Speaker 1: called the coronavirus because these spiky protrusions look like coronas

88
00:05:34,880 --> 00:05:39,440
Speaker 1: something that suggests a halo or a crown. The synthetic

89
00:05:39,680 --> 00:05:42,760
Speaker 1: mRNA in the new vaccine carries the code for the

90
00:05:42,839 --> 00:05:46,720
Speaker 1: spiky protein. When introduced into a healthy body, the m

91
00:05:46,800 --> 00:05:49,719
Speaker 1: RNA takes this code and joins up with the protein

92
00:05:49,760 --> 00:05:54,440
Speaker 1: making ribosomes in cells to manufacture the spiky proteins that

93
00:05:54,520 --> 00:05:59,320
Speaker 1: prompts our bodies to produce antibodies to destroy these strange proteins,

94
00:05:59,360 --> 00:06:03,520
Speaker 1: including when they come attached to a real invading coronavirus.

95
00:06:04,600 --> 00:06:08,160
Speaker 1: Without their spikes, the coronavirus can't live and reproduce, so

96
00:06:08,520 --> 00:06:12,600
Speaker 1: end of story. The advantages of the m r and

97
00:06:12,680 --> 00:06:16,240
Speaker 1: A method are many. On the business end, it's cheaper

98
00:06:16,320 --> 00:06:18,560
Speaker 1: to produce a bunch of m RNA strands than it

99
00:06:18,640 --> 00:06:21,000
Speaker 1: is to grow a bunch of viruses, then kill them off,

100
00:06:21,040 --> 00:06:24,440
Speaker 1: and then build a vaccine around them without all those

101
00:06:24,600 --> 00:06:29,360
Speaker 1: labor intensive and time meeting steps. It's faster too. On

102
00:06:29,400 --> 00:06:32,800
Speaker 1: the health side, m RNA is probably less dangerous than

103
00:06:33,040 --> 00:06:36,520
Speaker 1: dosing people with even a manageable amount of even a

104
00:06:36,520 --> 00:06:40,839
Speaker 1: weekend or dead virus, and best of all, according to

105
00:06:40,960 --> 00:06:46,360
Speaker 1: latest data, it may be more effective. The disadvantages, well,

106
00:06:46,520 --> 00:06:49,760
Speaker 1: there are some. The biggest is that it's never been

107
00:06:49,800 --> 00:06:53,919
Speaker 1: done before. mRNA technology, although it's been around for at

108
00:06:53,960 --> 00:06:56,159
Speaker 1: least a couple of decades, has never been used in

109
00:06:56,160 --> 00:06:59,640
Speaker 1: a vaccine, so it's got a lot of proving to do.

110
00:07:01,120 --> 00:07:04,200
Speaker 1: Late stage testing on Maderna's and Viser's work as of

111
00:07:04,240 --> 00:07:09,160
Speaker 1: early December twenty has been exceedingly promising. Both the fiser

112
00:07:09,320 --> 00:07:14,600
Speaker 1: and Maderna m RNA vaccines have proved better than nine effective. Maderna,

113
00:07:14,760 --> 00:07:18,120
Speaker 1: which enrolled thirty thousand adult participants in the United States,

114
00:07:18,160 --> 00:07:21,080
Speaker 1: reported the just eleven of the hundred ninety six total

115
00:07:21,120 --> 00:07:24,440
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen cases in their study occurred among the vaccinated.

116
00:07:24,800 --> 00:07:28,960
Speaker 1: The other five infections occurred in the placebo group. That

117
00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:32,040
Speaker 1: equates to a ninety four point one percent efficacy rate.

118
00:07:32,600 --> 00:07:36,240
Speaker 1: And Furthermore, none of the infected patients who had received

119
00:07:36,280 --> 00:07:40,840
Speaker 1: the vaccine developed severe symptoms. Viser saw similar results in

120
00:07:40,880 --> 00:07:44,920
Speaker 1: its Phase three trial. In the trials, the vaccines also

121
00:07:44,960 --> 00:07:48,040
Speaker 1: seemed to do more than simply ward off COVID nineteen.

122
00:07:48,760 --> 00:07:51,720
Speaker 1: They've shown that they may reduce the rate of infection too,

123
00:07:52,440 --> 00:07:54,920
Speaker 1: keeping those with the virus from spreading it to others

124
00:07:54,960 --> 00:07:59,320
Speaker 1: around them. Both companies are expected to apply for something

125
00:07:59,360 --> 00:08:02,200
Speaker 1: called an IMMER Agency Use Authorization from the US Food

126
00:08:02,200 --> 00:08:05,800
Speaker 1: and Drug Administration. If granted, they'll ramp up production on

127
00:08:05,840 --> 00:08:09,920
Speaker 1: the vaccines, still testing as they go. If everything goes right,

128
00:08:10,040 --> 00:08:12,840
Speaker 1: the general public might have access to these vaccines by

129
00:08:12,840 --> 00:08:18,800
Speaker 1: the middle of but hurdles do remain. Manufacturing must increase

130
00:08:18,840 --> 00:08:22,640
Speaker 1: at levels never before attempted, Shipping and storing these m

131
00:08:22,760 --> 00:08:26,720
Speaker 1: RNA vaccines must be ironed out. The Fiser m RNA

132
00:08:26,840 --> 00:08:29,720
Speaker 1: vaccine requires it to be stored at negative ninety four

133
00:08:29,760 --> 00:08:34,040
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit that's negative thirty four celsius and degrades after

134
00:08:34,080 --> 00:08:39,000
Speaker 1: about five days. The temperatures of just above freezing. Maderna's

135
00:08:39,040 --> 00:08:41,760
Speaker 1: supposedly can be stored at thirty six to forty six

136
00:08:41,800 --> 00:08:44,760
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit that's two to eight degrees celsius for up

137
00:08:44,760 --> 00:08:47,880
Speaker 1: to thirty days and remain stable at negative four fahrenheit

138
00:08:48,040 --> 00:08:52,000
Speaker 1: or negative twenties celsius for up to six months. Most

139
00:08:52,080 --> 00:08:55,000
Speaker 1: vaccine candidates now in the late stage trials take two

140
00:08:55,040 --> 00:08:57,560
Speaker 1: doses to be effective, so that has to be planned

141
00:08:57,559 --> 00:09:01,559
Speaker 1: for two and determining who was first in line, what

142
00:09:01,640 --> 00:09:05,040
Speaker 1: countries in which people within those countries is still being

143
00:09:05,040 --> 00:09:09,080
Speaker 1: worked out. In the meantime, other companies are deep in

144
00:09:09,160 --> 00:09:12,960
Speaker 1: research and development, using both m RNA and more traditional

145
00:09:12,960 --> 00:09:16,920
Speaker 1: methods to bring vaccines to market. Some fifty four vaccines

146
00:09:16,960 --> 00:09:19,080
Speaker 1: are in clinical trials and humans, according to The New

147
00:09:19,160 --> 00:09:22,440
Speaker 1: York Times, and at least seven are in pre clinical

148
00:09:22,480 --> 00:09:27,520
Speaker 1: trials and animals. Richardson said the m RNA methods now

149
00:09:27,559 --> 00:09:30,480
Speaker 1: that we have the efficacy numbers are now in the lead,

150
00:09:30,960 --> 00:09:33,600
Speaker 1: but there are many different candidates. There will likely be

151
00:09:33,800 --> 00:09:37,640
Speaker 1: multiple vaccines. They're licensed and available to the public. Who

152
00:09:37,640 --> 00:09:39,840
Speaker 1: knows what the landscape will be In a year. We

153
00:09:39,920 --> 00:09:42,240
Speaker 1: may have five or six more to choose from, just

154
00:09:42,360 --> 00:09:45,600
Speaker 1: like flu vaccines, and because you need so much, you

155
00:09:45,640 --> 00:09:51,680
Speaker 1: need multiple manufacturers. The pace has been breathtaking. Faced with

156
00:09:51,720 --> 00:09:54,599
Speaker 1: one of the deadliest outbreaks of disease in many lifetimes,

157
00:09:54,800 --> 00:09:57,679
Speaker 1: the government and private sector have joined forces to come

158
00:09:57,760 --> 00:10:01,080
Speaker 1: up with a possible answer in record time, and what

159
00:10:01,120 --> 00:10:03,240
Speaker 1: we've learned may help us handle the next virus that

160
00:10:03,280 --> 00:10:08,079
Speaker 1: comes along. Richardson explained the speed, the number of vaccine development,

161
00:10:08,120 --> 00:10:12,200
Speaker 1: corollary effects, bioprocessing, knowing how to scale up, the coordination

162
00:10:12,280 --> 00:10:14,480
Speaker 1: with the regulatory bodies like the f d A and

163
00:10:14,559 --> 00:10:17,960
Speaker 1: other organizations around the world. I think those will pay

164
00:10:18,040 --> 00:10:26,240
Speaker 1: benefits for years to come. Today's episode was written by

165
00:10:26,280 --> 00:10:28,800
Speaker 1: John Donovan and produced by Tyler Klang. For more in

166
00:10:28,880 --> 00:10:31,640
Speaker 1: this amounts of other topics, visit house toffworks dot com.

167
00:10:31,720 --> 00:10:34,560
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio. Or more podcasts

168
00:10:34,600 --> 00:10:37,560
Speaker 1: in my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

169
00:10:37,640 --> 00:10:39,480
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,