For all those going on about Gates & vaccines: this is Dr Kizzmekia Corbett, one of the chief architects of the Moderna vaccine. Beating herself up for getting more than 4 hours sleep in a night. Her equivalent on the Oxford/AstraZeneca one is Dr Tess Lambe (@jenneratingVacc)
https://twitter.com/KizzyPhD/status/1348921734481801216
Dr Corbett was working on a vaccine for MERS before 2020. That work involved designing a "prefusion stabilised Spike protein" (pnas.org/content/114/35…) using the same technique used in the NIAID/Moderna vaccine. The MERS stabilised Spike was tested in mice in 2017.
Over at Oxford, Dr Lambe previously worked on a flu vaccine using the ChAdOx1 non-replicating virus vector (more on that below) used in the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
ChAdOx1 is a development from a chimpanzee virus (journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…) with key components (E1 & E3) removed. E1 is necessary for growth, so ChAdOx1 only grows in cells that provide E1. Removing E3 makes "space" to insert a protein (e.g. SARS-CoV-2 Spike).
My point with all of the above? The fast-pace development from people like Drs Corbett & Lambe was based on years of (often difficult-to-fund) work. BTW if you're interested in vaccines and how they work, this is a nice intro: nature.com/articles/s4157…
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