Scientists were close to a coronavirus vaccine years ago. Then the money dried up. nbcnews.to/38wwg5i (1/7)
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Dr. Peter Hotez says he made the pitch to anyone who would listen. After years of research, his team of scientists in Texas had helped develop a vaccine to protect against a deadly strain of coronavirus. Now they needed money to begin testing in humans.
But this was 2016. (2/7)
But this was 2016. (2/7)
More than a decade had passed since SARS had spread through China, killing more than 770 people.
That disease was a distant memory by the time Hotez and his team sought funding to test whether their vaccine would work in humans. (3/7)
That disease was a distant memory by the time Hotez and his team sought funding to test whether their vaccine would work in humans. (3/7)
That was a big missed opportunity, according to Hotez and other scientists, who argue that SARS, and the Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, of 2012, should have triggered major federal and global investments to develop vaccines in anticipation of future epidemics. (4/7)
Instead, the SARS vaccine that Hotez's team created in collaboration with scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston is sitting in a freezer, no closer to commercial production than it was 4 years ago. (5/7)
"We could have had this ready to go and been testing the vaccine's efficacy at the start of this new outbreak in China," says Hotez, who believes the vaccine could provide cross-protection against the new coronavirus. (6/7)
As of Wednesday, there had been more than 94,000 confirmed coronavirus cases globally and about 3,200 deaths. (7/7)
