Post by account_disabled on Mar 4, 2024 3:38:05 GMT -5
For sure no one knows where the virus came from. They could have been from the dark depths of one of the hundreds of bat caves scattered across China. It is also possible that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, escaped from a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In any case, thanks to the scientists who led the innovative development and construction of these COVID-19 vaccines, we now have a nearly endless list of possibilities. But who are these Time Heroes of the Year... Here we present them to you.
About a month after the first group of wheezing patients appeared in a Wuhan hospital ; The entire genome of the responsible coronavirus (30,000 specific nucleotides) had already been classified, identified and published online. Two weeks later, designs were already being fed into machines to create a vaccine that would unlock the world. How was it possible? A Time article reveals it to us.
However, the vaccines that first stopped the Chile Mobile Number List spread of COVID-19, and that will surely be adjusted to stop the Omicron variant and future mutations, were never a foregone conclusion. There were certainly moments in the careers of Time's so-called Heroes of the Year: Kizzmekia Corbett, Barney Graham, Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman when they felt like the problem they faced was the only thing to solve. Exposing the inner workings of how viruses survive and thrive is what made COVID-19 vaccines possible.
The four Time Heroes of the Year weren't alone in those efforts, though; Scientists around the world have produced COVID-19 vaccines using a variety of platforms and technologies. Still, Corbett, Graham, Kariko and Weissman, Time's Heroes of the Year, made a breakthrough of singular importance by introducing an mRNA-based vaccine platform.
Time Heroes of the Year
The mRNA challenge
Katalin Kariko grew up as the daughter of a butcher in a small town in Hungary, and lived under the communist regime in the 1950s and 1960s. Watching her father at his work, the young Kariko became fascinated with discovering how living things work. . That led her to pursue undergraduate studies in biology at the University of Szeged, where she first learned about RNA.
During his studies at the University of Szeged, where he first learned about RNA. It would become his obsession throughout his PhD in biochemistry. studies, postgraduate degrees and, ultimately, the rest of his life. If DNA forms the letters of life, RNA creates words and, ultimately, sentences.
In fact, RNA, and specifically messenger RNA or mRNA , instructs the body on how to make all the proteins, enzymes, receptors, and other molecules that allow living things to function.
This is how Kariko became convinced that mRNA, modified in the right way, could be used to turn the body into its own drug factory. And produce precision compounds tailored to treat any disease caused by a lack of a certain protein.
The challenge with mRNA is that it is notoriously unstable: if it is injected into the human body, it is chewed up before it can serve its purpose. Another complicating issue is that it must be stored at extremely low temperatures to remain intact.
Certainly, Kariko's problem was that he had not found a way to suppress the RNA's tendency to trigger the immune system's inflammatory response, which destroyed the RNA.
"I'm open to anything"
Drew Weissman, MD.
Although Kariko was facing difficulties in the development of mRNA, an informal conversation with Drew Weissman would allow the research to continue. He and Kariko shared the habit of photocopying recent scientific journal articles from the research library. By machine, they discussed their respective approaches to vaccine development.
Time Heroes of the Year
Put it in a thick bubble!
For almost the next decade, Kariko and Weissman combined efforts and achieved a breakthrough: evading the immune system. Starting by changing a specific mRNA building block.
Weissman discovered that enclosing the mRNA in a bubble of fat protected the precious genetic code when it was introduced into the body of a living being; while at the same time activating the immune system to attack it.
The investigation accelerated quickly. The mRNA-based vaccines developed during 2000 were almost 100% effective in protecting laboratory animals from becoming infected and sick.
While a flu vaccine, for example, takes months to develop; An mRNA vaccine only requires a read of the genetic sequence of a virus. Scientists can take that code, select the relevant parts of the genome, build the corresponding mRNA with chemicals, insert it into the fat bubble, and voila! – a new vaccine is born.
However, it was not until 15 years later, faced with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that the global scientific community understood the importance of their discoveries.
Structure-based design
Kansas native Dr. Barney Graham was working on a vaccine for RSV, a cold-like contagion, when a new target, SARS-CoV-2, emerged. The construction of a vaccine based on the shape of the virus proteins.
In July 2019, Graham and his team published early results showing that a vaccine based on Moderna's mRNA platform and containing its modified RSV protein increased the immune response in people by more than ten times that of previous vaccines. against RSV.
Kizzmekia Corbett , a microbiology and immunologist at the University of North Carolina, joined Graham's team, applying what the group had learned about RSV to coronaviruses. In 2019, she and her colleagues had figured out how to engineer the spike protein; the part of the virus that attaches to the healthy cell, so that the immune system can generate a maximum response.
Based on his success with freezing the correct viral structure of other viruses, Graham thought that stabilizing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in its similar state just before infecting a cell would have the same immuno-activating effect in a vaccine.
It was Graham's idea, to target the spike protein pre-fusion, that became the basis for several major vaccines being tested or used around the world; including Pfizer-BioNTech-, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson-Janssen, Sanofi and Novavax.
After those 10 months of working all the time... and trying to reach an end point, the relief of knowing that we had something that could make a difference was the most meaningful to me
Dr. Barney Graham.
The fastest a vaccine had previously been developed was four years (for mumps, in the 1960s). The shots developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna took less than 12 months. That made some skeptical : Could a new technology, designed in record time, be trusted to combat a new virus ? Well yes, Time's Heroes of the Year did it.
Corbett admits that the scientists themselves could have communicated that fact better. Because, although a vaccine was designed overnight, it was backed by years of clinical studies. Despite this, denial and lack of access still exists in some regions. Scientists have given humanity a weapon to fight the pandemic.
About a month after the first group of wheezing patients appeared in a Wuhan hospital ; The entire genome of the responsible coronavirus (30,000 specific nucleotides) had already been classified, identified and published online. Two weeks later, designs were already being fed into machines to create a vaccine that would unlock the world. How was it possible? A Time article reveals it to us.
However, the vaccines that first stopped the Chile Mobile Number List spread of COVID-19, and that will surely be adjusted to stop the Omicron variant and future mutations, were never a foregone conclusion. There were certainly moments in the careers of Time's so-called Heroes of the Year: Kizzmekia Corbett, Barney Graham, Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman when they felt like the problem they faced was the only thing to solve. Exposing the inner workings of how viruses survive and thrive is what made COVID-19 vaccines possible.
The four Time Heroes of the Year weren't alone in those efforts, though; Scientists around the world have produced COVID-19 vaccines using a variety of platforms and technologies. Still, Corbett, Graham, Kariko and Weissman, Time's Heroes of the Year, made a breakthrough of singular importance by introducing an mRNA-based vaccine platform.
Time Heroes of the Year
The mRNA challenge
Katalin Kariko grew up as the daughter of a butcher in a small town in Hungary, and lived under the communist regime in the 1950s and 1960s. Watching her father at his work, the young Kariko became fascinated with discovering how living things work. . That led her to pursue undergraduate studies in biology at the University of Szeged, where she first learned about RNA.
During his studies at the University of Szeged, where he first learned about RNA. It would become his obsession throughout his PhD in biochemistry. studies, postgraduate degrees and, ultimately, the rest of his life. If DNA forms the letters of life, RNA creates words and, ultimately, sentences.
In fact, RNA, and specifically messenger RNA or mRNA , instructs the body on how to make all the proteins, enzymes, receptors, and other molecules that allow living things to function.
This is how Kariko became convinced that mRNA, modified in the right way, could be used to turn the body into its own drug factory. And produce precision compounds tailored to treat any disease caused by a lack of a certain protein.
The challenge with mRNA is that it is notoriously unstable: if it is injected into the human body, it is chewed up before it can serve its purpose. Another complicating issue is that it must be stored at extremely low temperatures to remain intact.
Certainly, Kariko's problem was that he had not found a way to suppress the RNA's tendency to trigger the immune system's inflammatory response, which destroyed the RNA.
"I'm open to anything"
Drew Weissman, MD.
Although Kariko was facing difficulties in the development of mRNA, an informal conversation with Drew Weissman would allow the research to continue. He and Kariko shared the habit of photocopying recent scientific journal articles from the research library. By machine, they discussed their respective approaches to vaccine development.
Time Heroes of the Year
Put it in a thick bubble!
For almost the next decade, Kariko and Weissman combined efforts and achieved a breakthrough: evading the immune system. Starting by changing a specific mRNA building block.
Weissman discovered that enclosing the mRNA in a bubble of fat protected the precious genetic code when it was introduced into the body of a living being; while at the same time activating the immune system to attack it.
The investigation accelerated quickly. The mRNA-based vaccines developed during 2000 were almost 100% effective in protecting laboratory animals from becoming infected and sick.
While a flu vaccine, for example, takes months to develop; An mRNA vaccine only requires a read of the genetic sequence of a virus. Scientists can take that code, select the relevant parts of the genome, build the corresponding mRNA with chemicals, insert it into the fat bubble, and voila! – a new vaccine is born.
However, it was not until 15 years later, faced with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that the global scientific community understood the importance of their discoveries.
Structure-based design
Kansas native Dr. Barney Graham was working on a vaccine for RSV, a cold-like contagion, when a new target, SARS-CoV-2, emerged. The construction of a vaccine based on the shape of the virus proteins.
In July 2019, Graham and his team published early results showing that a vaccine based on Moderna's mRNA platform and containing its modified RSV protein increased the immune response in people by more than ten times that of previous vaccines. against RSV.
Kizzmekia Corbett , a microbiology and immunologist at the University of North Carolina, joined Graham's team, applying what the group had learned about RSV to coronaviruses. In 2019, she and her colleagues had figured out how to engineer the spike protein; the part of the virus that attaches to the healthy cell, so that the immune system can generate a maximum response.
Based on his success with freezing the correct viral structure of other viruses, Graham thought that stabilizing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in its similar state just before infecting a cell would have the same immuno-activating effect in a vaccine.
It was Graham's idea, to target the spike protein pre-fusion, that became the basis for several major vaccines being tested or used around the world; including Pfizer-BioNTech-, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson-Janssen, Sanofi and Novavax.
After those 10 months of working all the time... and trying to reach an end point, the relief of knowing that we had something that could make a difference was the most meaningful to me
Dr. Barney Graham.
The fastest a vaccine had previously been developed was four years (for mumps, in the 1960s). The shots developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna took less than 12 months. That made some skeptical : Could a new technology, designed in record time, be trusted to combat a new virus ? Well yes, Time's Heroes of the Year did it.
Corbett admits that the scientists themselves could have communicated that fact better. Because, although a vaccine was designed overnight, it was backed by years of clinical studies. Despite this, denial and lack of access still exists in some regions. Scientists have given humanity a weapon to fight the pandemic.