How a dangerous bet on biotechnology led to the COVID-19 vaccine-60 minutes

Last week, more than 15,000 family members, friends and neighbors were infected with the coronavirus. Therefore, when the pharmaceutical company Pfizer started the first dose of the vaccine nationwide, a sigh of relief was heard. Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, which frequently advertise on the broadcast, were the only major vaccine developers to refuse federal funding for research and development, but received an emergency use authorization from the FDA. It was the first company. On Friday, biotechnology company Moderna was also licensed. Under Operation Warp Speed, the federal government has set a goal of 20 million doses by the end of the year. But that goal may be ambitious. Vaccine deployment was difficult. Still, for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic, the revolutionary advances in biotechnology seem to have come to an end.

Bill Whitaker: This is a pandemic worldwide and the worst of the century. Vaccines with this technology have never been on the market. It’s a big bet you made when this worked.

Kathrin Jansen: Yeah, I didn’t see it much-perhaps as a bet for us to be scientists. That’s what we do for our daily lives. We discover new things. Everything is new.

Kathrin Jansen is responsible for Pfizer’s vaccine research and development. Based in New York, the company is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. A childhood interest in science in Germany, Janssen grew up to develop vaccines for pneumonia and the HPV virus. So when she first heard about the new coronavirus, her thoughts were immediately turned to vaccines.

Bill Whitaker: New York was igniting the virus when you started this mission.

Katrin Jansen: Yeah. We lived in the hot zone of New York. And we saw first-hand what was happening-every day. And Bill, the most chilling thing for me was when we walked the dog. And refrigerated trucks are appearing one after another in the parking lot in front of the hospital.

Bill Whitaker: Morgue of a fridge truck?

Katrin Jansen: It’s a morgue. It absolutely stimulated the desire to come up with a vaccine at all costs.

Bill Whitaker: Was this personal?

Kathrin Jansen: I took this very personally. I wanted to fight it, defeat it, and defeat it. It-was nothing else.

Across the Atlantic, in Mainz, German doctors Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci also focused on the fight against the coronavirus. When Sahin, the founder of a state-of-the-art biotechnology company called BioNTech, read an article on a mysterious disease in Wuhan, China, on January 24, they were working with Pfizer on the flu vaccine.

Dr. Ugur Sahin: We knew we were most likely to encounter a pandemic. And we knew we didn’t have time to waste.

Dr. Ozlem Tureci: Basically I started thinking about vaccine development programs from scratch, so I had to pivot the whole company.

Bill Whitaker: Did you have any doubts about doing so?

Dr. Ugur Sahin: There was no doubt. The only thing I was worried about was that it might be too late.

The couple’s company, BioNTech, is conducting pioneering research on vaccines made from mRNA. mRNA is an intracellular molecule that passes gene instructions from DNA to particles that make proteins, which are components of life.

Dr. Ugur Sahin: We knew the effectiveness of our technology, so we felt responsible for starting the development of the vaccine.

Manipulating mRNA molecules in the laboratory to fight disease has been seen as a promising technique for over 30 years, but has never produced a proven vaccine. As the coronavirus spread throughout Europe, Sahin and Tureci doubled their efforts. By February, BioNTech had produced 20 mRNAs that elicited an immune response between mice and monkeys. Sahin knew that his little company needed help to move his research beyond the lab, so he picked up the phone and called Pfizer’s friend Kathrin Jansen.

Dr. Uguru Sahin: And she said, “Uguru, why are you calling me?” And I said, “Cathrin, I started making a vaccine against COVID-19. I wanted to ask if Pfizer would join us.” “Of course, Uguru, I really wanted to call you, because I’m also interested in developing vaccines, which will be our most important project,” she said.

It became like an obsession with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla …

Albert Bourla: Who was I wondering if it wasn’t us? We have a lot of experience with vaccines. We have many manufacturing capabilities using vaccines. I went and said, “I need to do something to see if it helps in the development of medical solutions.”

Since March, he has urged Pfizer scientists to develop vaccines rapidly. He has set a deadline for October.

Albert Bourla: Then, of course, I gave them some tools as well. I told them I should think, this is not business as usual. There is no consideration of the rate of return on investment. This is w–believed to have an open checkbook, its rights-

Bill Whitaker: An open checkbook.

Albert Bourla: Yes.

Bill Whitaker: Have you ever wondered how much you are willing to pay?

Albert Bourla: It costs about $ 2 billion. And I knew it would be very painful if we failed and had to cancel it. However, Pfizer never goes down.

Katrin Jansen convinced his boss Albert Bourla that mRNA technology was most likely to meet his tight deadlines. In collaboration with BioNTech on influenza vaccines, she was convinced that mRNA was at the pinnacle of breakthrough progress. So Pfizer CEO Bula approved the partnership and rolled the lab technology dice.

Bill Whitaker: There was a great chance that it wouldn’t succeed.

Albert Bourla: I believe in the power of science. I believe in the power of the private sector. And I believe in the miracle that private sector science can do for humanity.

Unlike traditional vaccines made with real viruses, these mRNA molecules are rapidly generated in the laboratory and the viral genetic code is slightly programmed. We have all seen pictures of coronaviruses with peplomer crowns. The mRNA vaccine directs healthy cells to make replicas of the spikes. They can’t make you sick, but they tell the immune system what the virus looks like. When a real virus appears, antibodies in the immune system attack it.

By May, Pfizer was ready to begin testing vaccines in various parts of the United States.

Dr. Mark Mulligan: And I raised my hand and said “yes”.

They tapped Dr. Mark Mulligan, Director of the NYU-Langone Vaccine Center in Manhattan.

Dr. Mark Mulligan: I have been working on HIV / AIDS vaccines, Zika, Ebola and influenza pandemic vaccines. So this is really the moment we jump in and say, “Well, let’s do it. Let’s be part of the solution.”

Nearly 44,000 people worldwide volunteered for a step-by-step, double-blind study to test the vaccine against placebo. Most were between the ages of 16 and 85. Researchers were skeptical when they reached out to African-American and Hispanic applicants.

Bill Whitaker: Were these communities well represented in court?

Dr. Mark Mulligan: I think so. The Hispanic population, the African-American black population, and the indigenous American population add up to just under 40%. Especially for African Americans, I would like to do a little better. It was just under 10%. But overall, I think it’s good. Harlem has several town halls with community partners. It’s important to say, “Yes, I’ve tested it in your community. Yes, it was just as tolerated, safe, and just as protected.”

Step-by-step trials are usually done sequentially. To speed up the process, the FDA has allowed these tests to run simultaneously. Dr. Mulligan told us that he had never seen it happen so quickly.

Bill Whitaker: What do you say to people who are worried that it’s too fast and this might be on the market in a hurry?

Dr. Mark Mulligan: Given the huge public health emergencies we face internationally, it was appropriate to use all speeds. I’ve been testing vaccines for 30 years and I-promise that there are no issues with normal safety assessments.

Volunteer blood samples were taken to the Pfizer facility in Pearl River, NY, where these robots ran day and night to analyze the effectiveness of the vaccine. They will continue to collect and analyze samples for two years.

Kathrin Jansen: These robots probably processed over 180,000 tests.

Last month, Katrin Jansen was resting in the countryside with her husband when the results of the important third phase were revealed. She received a call from Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

Katrin Jansen: And I said, “What’s wrong, Albert?” “Well, Katrin, we told the FDA, we can say that the vaccine is more than 90% effective,” he said. And I said, “What? (Laughs) That’s great.” So my husband and I, he stood right next to me, we-we are jumping up and down.

Dr. Mark Mulligan: Getting the very needed vaccine, protecting it 95%, and doing it very quickly is unmatched in my experience.

Bill Whitaker: Can you say goodbye to Mask?

Dr. Mark Mulligan: I’m not afraid. It is not yet known if the vaccine will prevent asymptomatic infections. Vaccines will probably not make a difference to this current surge we are facing.

Bill Whitaker: We will experience this for a while.

Dr. Mark Mulligan: Of course. It’s not like an on / off light switch, it’s like a dimming switch that slowly raises to turn on the light. 5%, 10%, 20% and 50% of people have been vaccinated for several months. However, to end the pandemic in 2021, perhaps 75% of people will need to be vaccinated. That way you can stop the pandemic.

There are still many unknowns about this vaccine: how long will it last? Do you have long-term safety issues and why are so few people having a severe allergic reaction? It still needs to be tested in toddlers and pregnant women. But the most pressing issue is the bumpy development. Vaccine development was rapid, but so far there has been no distribution. Pfizer has reduced its projected dose in 2020 by more than 50% due to a shortage of raw materials. The state complains that the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed ​​hasn’t provided clear guidance on what to get and when to get it. At this point, the light at the end of the tunnel is still weak.

Last week, when the pandemic killed 300,000 people in the United States, the bell of the National Cathedral in Washington DC rang 300 times. This is once in every 1000 Americans killed by the virus.

Bill Whitaker: This vaccine is called a miracle. How would you describe it?

Katrin Jansen: That’s a miracle. But miracles always have the feeling that it just happened. It didn’t just happen. correct? It was intentional. It was done with passion and it was done with passion. It was urgent. The catastrophic illness was always visible to you.

Produced by Mark Lieberman. Associate Producer, Arirawaf. Broadcast Associate, Emilio Almonte. Edited by Sean Kelly.