Halting progress and happy accidents: How mRNA vaccines were made

[marmar]

By GINA KOLATA and BENJAMIN MUELLER
The New York Times


Thousands of miles from Dr. Barney Graham’s lab in Bethesda, Maryland, a frightening new coronavirus had jumped from camels to humans in the Middle East, killing 1 out of every 3 people infected. An expert on the world’s most intractable viruses, Graham had been working for months to develop a vaccine but had gotten nowhere.

Now he was terrified that the virus, Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, had infected one of his lab’s own scientists, who was sick with a fever and a cough in fall 2013 after a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

A nose swab came back positive for a coronavirus, seeming to confirm Graham’s worst fears, only for a second test to deliver relief: It was a mild coronavirus, causing a common cold, not MERS.

Graham had a flash of intuition: Perhaps it would be worth taking a closer look at this humdrum cold virus.

The decision to study a colleague’s bad cold gave rise to critical discoveries. Together with other chance breakthroughs that seemed insignificant at the time, it would lead eventually to the mRNA vaccines now protecting hundreds of millions of people from COVID-19. ..........................(more)

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/halting-progress-and-happy-accidents-how-mrna-vaccines-were-made/

[Hekate]

1. Thanks for this: downloaded to read at leisure