Years of research have laid the foundation for speedy COVID-19 shots.

How can scientists compete COVID-19 (new coronavirus infection) (# If there is no character limit, add parentheses when it first appears Is the vaccine so fast without cutting corners? Just as the coronavirus erupted, more than a decade of behind-the-scenes research where new vaccine technology was ready for the challenge helped a good start.

“Speed ​​reflects years of work,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top US infectious disease expert, told The Associated Press. “That’s what the public has to understand.”

It is unbelievable that less than a year after creating a vaccine and discovering a disease the world has never seen before, rigorous research results are obtained, years after normal development. Is also shortened. However, the two leading US candidates are made in a way that promises that faster development could become the norm.

Dr. C. Buddy Kleich, a vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University, explained the reaction of scientists when separate studies showed that the two candidates were about 95% effective: “Dizziness It’s awful.

“I think we’re entering the golden age of vaccine science by having these types of new technologies,” Kulich said in a briefing at the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Both shots, created by Pfizer and BioNTech, and by Modana and the National Institutes of Health, are so-called messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines, a whole new technology. This month, US regulators will decide whether to allow emergency use, paving the way for distribution shots starting with healthcare professionals and nursing home residents.

Vaccine development has definitely sped up with billions of corporate and government funding. Unfortunately, the number of infections is so high that scientists didn’t have to wait long to find out that the shots seemed to work.

But long before COVID-19 came to the forefront, it was laid by two different research streams, NIH and the University of Pennsylvania. This is because scientists have learned a bit about other coronaviruses for some time. Outbreak of SARS and MERS.

“When the pandemic began, we were laying a strong foundation in both science and the handling of mRNA,” said Dr. Tal Zaks, Chief Medical Officer of Moderna, based in Massachusetts. I will.

Traditionally, making a vaccine required the growth of a virus or a fragment of the virus — often in a large vat of cells, or in chicken eggs, as in most influenza vaccinations. And refine them before the next step of the brewing shot.

The mRNA approach is fundamentally different. It begins with a fragment of the genetic code that carries instructions for making proteins. Choosing the right viral protein to target turns your body into a mini-vaccine factory.

“Instead of multiplying and inactivating the virus in 50,000-liter drums, we were able to deliver RNA and allow the body to make proteins and initiate an immune response,” said Dr. Drew Weissman of Penn.

Fifteen years ago, Weissman’s lab was trying to use mRNA to make a variety of drugs and vaccines. However, researchers have found that simply injecting the genetic code into an animal causes harmful inflammation.

Weissman and his colleague at the University of Pennsylvania, now at BioNTech, have come up with a small change to the components of laboratory-grown RNA that allows the inflamed sentinel to slip undetected.

“They were able to make stealth RNA in essence,” said Dr. Philip Dormitzer, Pfizer’s Chief Scientific Officer.

Other researchers have added a fat coating called lipid nanoparticles. This helped stealth RNA enter cells more easily and initiate the production of target proteins.

Meanwhile, at NIH, Dr. Bernie Graham’s team has come up with a way to properly prime the immune system with the right target, a well-named “spike” protein that coats the coronavirus.

Proper design is important. Surface proteins that latch various viruses into human cells have been found to change shape. That is, rearrange their forms before and after they merge into place. Brewing the vaccine in the wrong form cannot prevent the infection.

“If you place the same molecule in one way and the same molecule in another way, you get a completely different response,” Fauci explained.

Discovered in 2013, Graham, deputy director of the NIH Vaccine Research Center, and his colleague Jason McLellan are investigating a vaccine that failed decades ago against RSV, a pediatric respiratory disease. It was.

They focused on the correct structure of the RSV protein and learned to fine-tune the genes that stabilize the protein in the correct form for vaccine development. Not too far when the pandemic began, they continued to apply the lesson to other viruses, including research on the vaccine for COVID-19’s cousin MERS.

“It puts us in a position to do this quickly,” Graham told AP in February, before the NIH vaccine was first tested in people. “Once we have the atomic level details, we can design it to stabilize the protein.”

Similarly, in 2018, Germany’s BioNTech partnered with New York-based Pfizer to develop a more modern mRNA-based influenza vaccine, providing both companies with early knowledge of how to handle the technology.

“It was all brewing. It didn’t come out of nowhere,” said Pfizer’s Dormitzer.

Immediately after the new coronavirus was reported in China last January, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin switched gears and used the same method to create the COVID-19 vaccine.

Modana was also using mRNA to develop a vaccine against other bacteria, including the mosquito-borne Zika virus. The study was promising, but it was not progressing rapidly due to the failure of the Zika outbreak.

Then at NIH, Graham woke up on Saturday, January 11th and saw Chinese scientists sharing a new genetic map of the coronavirus. His team has begun to work on the correct form of spike protein. A few days later, they sent the recipe to Moderna-and the vaccine race began.