They spent 12 years solving a puzzle. It yielded the first COVID-19 vaccines.

 By Science - 2020-12-31

Description

Long before anyone knew of SARS-CoV-2, a small band of government and university scientists uncovered a prototypical key that unlocked life-saving immunizations.

Summary

  • They spent 12 years solving a puzzle.
  • Stabilizing the trickster By the time McLellan landed in 2008 at the Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland as an early-career researcher, Graham had been working on a little known but highly contagious disease caused by respiratory syncytial virus for more than 20 years.
  • By examining the protein at this atomic level, McLellan found a way to bioengineer it to take away its shape-shifting power.
  • Ultimately, experiments in animal models showed the MERS vaccine was successful, says Kizzmekia Corbett, a postdoctoral research fellow in Graham’s laboratory, and created a “portfolio of data” that the scientists knew they could apply to the new coronavirus.

 

Topics

  1. UX (0.19)
  2. Management (0.09)
  3. Machine_Learning (0.05)

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