Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam. Here, a medical breakthrough that
Speaker 1: could save thousands of lives and effectively quashed the deadliest
Speaker 1: pandemic in more than a century is eminent, it seems,
Speaker 1: a vaccine for COVID nineteen and all it took to
Speaker 1: reach this point, besides the incalculable pain and suffering of
Speaker 1: millions of people worldwide, was the talent of a veritable
Speaker 1: army of scientists, a push in the back, and some
Speaker 1: crafty maneuvering by the U. S. Government, a good idea
Speaker 1: that wouldn't go away, and billions and billions and billions
Speaker 1: of dollars. We spoke with Jim Richardson, the Senior Scientifical
Speaker 1: Liaison at U S Pharmacopeia, a two hundred year old
Speaker 1: scientific nonprofit that establishes federally enforced quality standards for, among
Speaker 1: other products, vaccines. He said, the amount of resources that
Speaker 1: are being applied to this is just up sedented. Millions
Speaker 1: of dollars have never been in such a short time
Speaker 1: applied to a problem of this magnitude, even with H
Speaker 1: one and one and other things that have happened over
Speaker 1: the years. This has really spurred a lot of a
Speaker 1: variety of different platforms that people have been working on
Speaker 1: for a long time. Dozens of companies, using several different
Speaker 1: scientific methods have been gobbling up those government dollars and
Speaker 1: quite a bit of private capital too, in order to
Speaker 1: create a vaccine to stop the coronavirus that's behind this pandemic.
Speaker 1: It's obviously important work. The virus that causes COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: has infected more than fifty six million people in the
Speaker 1: world and killed more than one point three million. It's
Speaker 1: responsible for more than two hundred and fifty thousand deaths
Speaker 1: in the U s alone. Two of the companies in particular,
Speaker 1: that are trying to create a COVID nineteen vaccine have
Speaker 1: stood out from the competition by employing a bold and
Speaker 1: still unproven process. But this time it just might work.
Speaker 1: Before the coronavirus that causes COVID nineteen reared its spiky
Speaker 1: head early in twenty twenty, creating vaccines was a painstaking,
Speaker 1: years long process. The Mum's vaccine was rolled out in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven in what's considered the fastest implementation in history.
Speaker 1: It took four years. The vaccine for this coronavirus, which
Speaker 1: is officially called the Severe Acute Respiratory syndrome Coronavirus two
Speaker 1: or STARS cove too, is on a much much faster
Speaker 1: track for a few reasons. First, because scientists have sena
Speaker 1: virus like this one before the Star's outbreak in two
Speaker 1: thousand three that infected more than eight thousand people worldwide
Speaker 1: and killed nearly eight hundred. The current virus, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, is eighty percent identical in genetic material to
Speaker 1: the one from two thousand three, so all researchers needed
Speaker 1: this time was to see how this virus was different
Speaker 1: from the last one. The Chinese scientists who discovered the
Speaker 1: current virus back in January mapped its genomes almost immediately
Speaker 1: and provided everyone with a text file of its complete
Speaker 1: set of DNA. Secondly, the pair of companies leading the
Speaker 1: raise for a vaccine, Maderna, which is in partnership with
Speaker 1: the National Institutes of Health, and Visor, which is working
Speaker 1: with a German film bioin Tech, finally seemed to have
Speaker 1: perfected a once dismissed idea for a vaccine to attack
Speaker 1: the virus. This new method of making a vaccine and
Speaker 1: more on that in a moment is simply much quicker
Speaker 1: than the old one. And thirdly, well, those billions and
Speaker 1: billions of dollars certainly lit a fire. To understand these
Speaker 1: new vaccines, it helps to first understand the old ones.
Speaker 1: Traditional vaccines typically use a weekend or attenuated form of
Speaker 1: the offending virus to nudge along a person's natural ability
Speaker 1: to combat microbes. The dead virus is injected into the body,
Speaker 1: the immune system learns what it looks like and how
Speaker 1: to fight it, and so when the real virus tax
Speaker 1: in best case scenarios, our bodies are ready for it
Speaker 1: because they already have the antibodies to fight it. Maderna
Speaker 1: and Fiser are using something different called synthetic messenger ribonucleic
Speaker 1: acid or synthetic mRNA instead of a virus to do
Speaker 1: the same thing. Push our bodies into producing antibodies to
Speaker 1: attack and neutralize the coronavirus before it can hook onto
Speaker 1: healthy cells and make us sick. Potentially, it's game changing,
Speaker 1: life saving, but let's break it down a bit more.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard of DNA, that double helix molecule found
Speaker 1: in every cell that contains your unique genetic code, but
Speaker 1: mRNA as its name flat out states it's a kind
Speaker 1: of messenger that carries bits of genetic code from cells
Speaker 1: nucleus out to the cells ribosomes, which use that code
Speaker 1: to create proteins. Paula Cannon, an associate professor of microbiology
Speaker 1: at the Universe Southern California's Tech School of Medicine, put
Speaker 1: it well when she told NBC News, if DNA is
Speaker 1: the big instruction manual for the cell, then messenger RNA
Speaker 1: is like when you photocopy just one page that you
Speaker 1: need and take that into your workshop. So here's how
Speaker 1: an m RNA vaccine works. The scientists target the spikes
Speaker 1: on the coronavirus, which are actually proteins that enable it
Speaker 1: to latch onto healthy cells. And by the way, it's
Speaker 1: called the coronavirus because these spiky protrusions look like coronas
Speaker 1: something that suggests a halo or a crown. The synthetic
Speaker 1: mRNA in the new vaccine carries the code for the
Speaker 1: spiky protein. When introduced into a healthy body, the m
Speaker 1: RNA takes this code and joins up with the protein
Speaker 1: making ribosomes in cells to manufacture the spiky proteins that
Speaker 1: prompts our bodies to produce antibodies to destroy these strange proteins,
Speaker 1: including when they come attached to a real invading coronavirus.
Speaker 1: Without their spikes, the coronavirus can't live and reproduce, so
Speaker 1: end of story. The advantages of the m r and
Speaker 1: A method are many. On the business end, it's cheaper
Speaker 1: to produce a bunch of m RNA strands than it
Speaker 1: is to grow a bunch of viruses, then kill them off,
Speaker 1: and then build a vaccine around them without all those
Speaker 1: labor intensive and time meeting steps. It's faster too. On
Speaker 1: the health side, m RNA is probably less dangerous than
Speaker 1: dosing people with even a manageable amount of even a
Speaker 1: weekend or dead virus, and best of all, according to
Speaker 1: latest data, it may be more effective. The disadvantages, well,
Speaker 1: there are some. The biggest is that it's never been
Speaker 1: done before. mRNA technology, although it's been around for at
Speaker 1: least a couple of decades, has never been used in
Speaker 1: a vaccine, so it's got a lot of proving to do.
Speaker 1: Late stage testing on Maderna's and Viser's work as of
Speaker 1: early December twenty has been exceedingly promising. Both the fiser
Speaker 1: and Maderna m RNA vaccines have proved better than nine effective. Maderna,
Speaker 1: which enrolled thirty thousand adult participants in the United States,
Speaker 1: reported the just eleven of the hundred ninety six total
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen cases in their study occurred among the vaccinated.
Speaker 1: The other five infections occurred in the placebo group. That
Speaker 1: equates to a ninety four point one percent efficacy rate.
Speaker 1: And Furthermore, none of the infected patients who had received
Speaker 1: the vaccine developed severe symptoms. Viser saw similar results in
Speaker 1: its Phase three trial. In the trials, the vaccines also
Speaker 1: seemed to do more than simply ward off COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: They've shown that they may reduce the rate of infection too,
Speaker 1: keeping those with the virus from spreading it to others
Speaker 1: around them. Both companies are expected to apply for something
Speaker 1: called an IMMER Agency Use Authorization from the US Food
Speaker 1: and Drug Administration. If granted, they'll ramp up production on
Speaker 1: the vaccines, still testing as they go. If everything goes right,
Speaker 1: the general public might have access to these vaccines by
Speaker 1: the middle of but hurdles do remain. Manufacturing must increase
Speaker 1: at levels never before attempted, Shipping and storing these m
Speaker 1: RNA vaccines must be ironed out. The Fiser m RNA
Speaker 1: vaccine requires it to be stored at negative ninety four
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit that's negative thirty four celsius and degrades after
Speaker 1: about five days. The temperatures of just above freezing. Maderna's
Speaker 1: supposedly can be stored at thirty six to forty six
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit that's two to eight degrees celsius for up
Speaker 1: to thirty days and remain stable at negative four fahrenheit
Speaker 1: or negative twenties celsius for up to six months. Most
Speaker 1: vaccine candidates now in the late stage trials take two
Speaker 1: doses to be effective, so that has to be planned
Speaker 1: for two and determining who was first in line, what
Speaker 1: countries in which people within those countries is still being
Speaker 1: worked out. In the meantime, other companies are deep in
Speaker 1: research and development, using both m RNA and more traditional
Speaker 1: methods to bring vaccines to market. Some fifty four vaccines
Speaker 1: are in clinical trials and humans, according to The New
Speaker 1: York Times, and at least seven are in pre clinical
Speaker 1: trials and animals. Richardson said the m RNA methods now
Speaker 1: that we have the efficacy numbers are now in the lead,
Speaker 1: but there are many different candidates. There will likely be
Speaker 1: multiple vaccines. They're licensed and available to the public. Who
Speaker 1: knows what the landscape will be In a year. We
Speaker 1: may have five or six more to choose from, just
Speaker 1: like flu vaccines, and because you need so much, you
Speaker 1: need multiple manufacturers. The pace has been breathtaking. Faced with
Speaker 1: one of the deadliest outbreaks of disease in many lifetimes,
Speaker 1: the government and private sector have joined forces to come
Speaker 1: up with a possible answer in record time, and what
Speaker 1: we've learned may help us handle the next virus that
Speaker 1: comes along. Richardson explained the speed, the number of vaccine development,
Speaker 1: corollary effects, bioprocessing, knowing how to scale up, the coordination
Speaker 1: with the regulatory bodies like the f d A and
Speaker 1: other organizations around the world. I think those will pay
Speaker 1: benefits for years to come. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: John Donovan and produced by Tyler Klang. For more in
Speaker 1: this amounts of other topics, visit house toffworks dot com.
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