We flew the plane while we were still building it.
If the uncertainty that led to the approval of anti-Covid vaccines were not yet sufficiently clear, a clarifying point comes from the interview, published in the scientific journal Nature, with Kathrin Jansen, head of Pfizer vaccine research and development, recently retired.
Microbiologist, studied in Germany and the United States. In her 30-year career she has mainly dealt with vaccines, when she worked at Merck she contributed to the creation of the Gardasil vaccine against papillomavirus, which was targeted by the investigative transmission Report due to the serious adverse effects that arose after administration in some young women . In recent years she worked at Pfizer where she dealt with the biotechnology of messenger RNA.
When the Covid emergency began in 2020, Pfizer was already collaborating with BioNTech on mRNA flu vaccines. The two pharmaceutical companies used this experimental platform and reduced the vaccine development time from ten years to just nine months. Over a billion doses have been administered to date in the United States and Europe. Revenue from the sale of these serums is expected to break a record of over $70 billion by the end of 2022.
Jansen reveals some interesting details on the development of serums starting from funding, which apparently have been central:
When Pfizer's CEO said: 'Do it by the end of the year', I replied: 'It's crazy!' But money was not a problem, therefore, extraordinary things could be done in a very short time“. We got creative: we couldn't wait for the data, we had to do so much at risk. We piloted the plane while we were still building it.
Jansen explains that all the bureaucracy has fallen, and confirms:
We were doing things in parallel, looking at the data and developing production. Usually, production doesn't get involved until years into a program."
In the words of the researcher it emerges how much the vaccination campaign was, in the end, a bet:
Covid has changed everything in terms of how to approach the concept of vaccine research and development, the mRNA platform was not ready for the launch. There were stability issues, wording issues, that we needed to fix. In 2020, it was just a research process and needed to be scaled up.
In short, according to the Pfizer microbiologist, haste and urgency have upset what is the normal process for developing a drug with a new biotechnology.
Now Pfizer is studying other mRna vaccines, for example against the respiratory syncytial virus. And the scientist launches into alarming predictions:
Without a doubt there will be a next pandemic.
If one thinks of the enormous profits that the pharmaceutical companies that produce Covid serums have achieved, one wonders whether Jansen's is a forecast or a hope.
References:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-022-00191-2
