Mike Walters
Agi Hajduczki, a scientist at walter Reed Institute of Infectious Diseases, opens a giant freezer and pulls out BOXES of DNA. It is part of a team that produces a COVID-19 vaccine.
Hajduczki puts a small clear plastic tray with a piece of white paper on his lab table. The tray is shaped like a honeycomb. A pale yellow liquid can be noticed dozens of dimples.
Some dimples are obviously yellower than others.
“More yellow means more protein,” he explains. So we’re looking to get mammalian cells to generate this protein for us, which would then be used as a vaccine in a clinical trial, so it looks like a spike, as in the genuine virus. “
The concept is that the immune formula would be informed to know this protein, thanks to the vaccine, and that when the genuine virus hit, the immune formula would know how to fight it.
Hajduczki was fascinated by viruses as a young woman in Hungary, seeing her pathologist mother paint about AIDS sufferers in the early 1980s.
“So even, you know, when the world didn’t necessarily know that this virus was happening like this, it was our verbal exchange at the table,” he says.
She now has a young daughter and took her to the lab for this pandemic, because like many parents across the country, Hajduczki and her husband fight between paintings and childcare. His voice breaks when he talks about the effects of the virus on his paintings and family life circle.
“It’s complicated because, like all our lives, we’ve been upside down,” Hajduczki says. “We paint in teams, crazy hours, a lot of stress. But then, you know, when I get home and then I take care of everything, like going to Trader Joe’s, it’s like a two-hour tour now, and I have a kid who came home from school. . . I have to tell him what’s going on. “
The vaccine with which Hajduczki is running will take time and will be directed only to the existing coronavirus. Human trials are expected to begin until later in the fall.
“The ultimate cost-effective and effective public fitness tool”
A food cart runs through the long corridors of high school just outside Washington, D. C. , beyond labs and presentations by scientists, letters and artifacts of the 19th century. There are closed doors with small symptoms on the wall. One says “Viral diseases. ” Another simply, “Malaria”.
In one of these offices is the scientist leading the army’s efforts in the race for an existing pandemic vaccine: Kayvon Modjarrad, a civilian doctor, a tall man, with wireless lenses and informally. here from Iran to New York in the 1970. Se interested in vaccines after taking a course as a medical student.
“I looked for vaccine paints,” he says, “because it’s the most cost-effective and effective public fitness tool we have to save lives. “
Modjarrad says he knew from the beginning that he was interested in medicine: “I had my first Fisher-Price medical kit when I was 4 years old for the Persian New Year. “
Modjarrad develops armed forces coronavirus vaccines, but is also a component of Operation Warp Speed, the government’s efforts to get personal corporations in the United States and around the world to create coronavirus vaccines.
“That’s why our establishment and our network of sites here in the US have been able to do so. But it’s not the first time And around the world they’re involved in a lot of other companies,” he says.
This means sharing the army’s experience. Laboratories, animal research, human sites in Washington, D. C. , San Diego and San Antonio, and the army also has partners and laboratories in Europe, Asia and Africa.
Modjarrad and officials compare the vaccination effort to a horse race, with several corporations coming out the door at the same time.
“A government-round type of technique has placed our bets on several horses because we’re not interested in a specific horse,” he says. “We are interested in a horse, at least one horse, that crosses the baseline as temporarily as you can imagine and is safe, effective and available to all our audiences and the public. “
Currently, several corporations are running the final third phase of human vaccine progression trials.
“It’s not like after the phase 3 trial,” he hears, the vaccine is in a position for everyone,” Modjarrad says. We are gradually starting to integrate it into the population and continue to collect data on how other people are responding to this vaccine until we reach a point where it is widely available to the entire population. “
Modjarrad says what helps keep him awake at night “is that we get back to business like we used to. “He says this pandemic will pass, that there will be several vaccines and that there will be other people from what happens in the long run, “but we will have to be prepared” for long-term pandemics, he says, “these emerging infectious threats, Zika, Ebola coronavirus, a new strain of influenza. It may not go away. “
The army has a long history of vaccine production, Modjarrad has worked on Zika and REM vaccines, and recently on one for Ebola.
And then there’s Walter Reed, the playboy. It was an army primary in the early 1900s that found that yellow fever was transmitted through mosquitoes and not through poor sanitation, as some believed at the time. The virus had a devastating effect on infantrymen and those in tropical climates.
“So we spray and kill all mosquitoes,” Modjarrad says. “People didn’t die. They built the Panama Canal. “
Diversity and inclusion
Modjarrad’s boss, Nelson Michael, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research, is located in a nearby office.
There are color maps of Africa and the world in Michael’s office. An image of him in his uniform when he was an army colonel. Talk on the phone to participants in Operation Warp Speed, a call that has sparked fear among some that speed has more to do with politics than science.
President Trump himself has fueled this belief by suggesting that a vaccine may be in a position before Election Day, an opinion scientists say is unlikely.
“There’s been a lot of fear about what you sacrifice by acting so fast,” he admits. “And I can tell you that one thing is very clear, it is a sacrifice and it is money.
Michael says that in the past, vaccine progression took so long (years) in component because corporations and governments hesitated to invest. A vaccine would only be manufactured after all approvals. The coronavirus has replaced all that.
“Now everyone is throwing monetary caution at the winds and billions of dollars are at stake,” Michael says. “But now we have, of course, a global pandemic that costs billions of dollars and affects, you know, the lives of millions of people. “
Michael is also involved in the controversy: do human trials fear an intelligent pattern of the population, especially across race?
“If you notice the effect on SARS-CoV-2 infection and the disease it causes, COVID-19, there is a disproportionate effect on other people of color in the United States,” he says. So you run a greater threat if you’re over 65, if you have comorities, high blood pressure, obesity. “
Many of the comorities presented in minority segments of society.
“Black people and the Latino and indigenous peoples of our country are at particularly high risk,” he says. “It is more vital than ever that we have diversity and inclusion in these studies. “
Everyone who works on the vaccine, whether personal or government efforts, “must do better. I can tell you. “
Michael acknowledges the suspicions, especially in the black community, that he has been a victim of government studies. inform them about the diagnosis and refuse to treat them.
For this vaccine, michael says, the government has created network engagement teams to succeed in African Americans and Native Americans in particular.
“I would say that indigenous peoples also are very suspicious of history,” Michael says. “And you know there are a lot of problems, of course, that they’re hitting our country right now, all at the same time, systemic racism. “
But he says there will be an even greater challenge once a vaccine is approved.
“I’m more involved in how we’re going to carry out a vaccination crusade than how we’re going to verify this vaccine,” he says. “How are we going to convince Americans that they want to sign up for their vaccine?”
Some surveys show that at least 30% of Americans say they are not vaccinated. Scientists say at least 40% of Americans want to get vaccinated. Michael puts that percentage even higher.
“What we want is to have between 70% and 90% of Americans who were vaccinated and immunized in this way, or who were exposed and survived and will be immunized due to an herbal infection,” he says.
A vaccine is expected from at least one of the personal corporations early next year. The military also continues to work on its own vaccine that can attack coronaviruses in the long run.
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