Women Behind the COVID-19 Vaccine

With 9 months having passed since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the vaccine is finally becoming available. While the general public is not expected to get vaccinated until the spring or summer of 2021, a minuscule percentage of health care workers, some celebrities, various politicians, and the vulnerable who have been eligible for the vaccine have started the vaccination process. Pfizer’s vaccine has been distributed to almost all states and U.S. territories and the Moderna vaccine, which has been approved for emergency use, is expected to be distributed on Monday, December 21, 2020. Both the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine require patients to receive two doses spaced a couple of weeks apart from each other. I always knew a COVID-19 vaccine would come, but I in no way thought it would come this quickly. When the influenza virus was first detected in the early 1930s, scientists had a working vaccine by the 1940s. When the poliovirus was first discovered in the 1930s, it wasn’t until 1953 that a successful vaccine had been introduced. Sure, technology and new health care innovations allowed the COVID-19 vaccine to be developed much quicker than the flu shot or the polio vaccine, but that isn’t the only thing that sped this process up, the women behind developing the vaccine played a very important role as well.

Starting off with Sarah Gilbert, a mother of triplets and a vaccinologist from Oxford University in England. Gilbert and her team started working on a vaccine as soon as the virus genome was sequenced (determining the DNA sequence of an organism). By early April of 2020, she and her team had produced hundreds of doses ready for use in clinical trials. She worked alongside a pharmaceutical company called AstraZeneca who has committed to making 2 billion doses of the vaccine. It was Sarah’s hope that the vaccine would be readily available to low-income and middle-income countries, hence the $4 price tag attached to each dose. Although Sarah’s success is no secret, when she was a young woman she almost passed up a job opportunity in the field of science. Thank goodness she didn’t because she is now one of, if not the most prominent face behind the Oxford vaccine.

Moving on to Chen Wei, a major general in China’s army as well as a virologist known for her work on the Ebola vaccine. Just two months after China was notified of the threat of COVID-19, Chen Wei stood in front of the Chinese Communist Party flag and received injections of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine. Shortly after receiving her first injection, she along with CanSino, a Chinese vaccine company, launched the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine trial in Wuhan, China. With cases surging in Brazil, the vaccine that Chen and her team helped to develop has been sent and distributed there.

Next up is Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer’s head of vaccine research and development. Jansen grew up in East Germany where she dealt with illness as a child which inspired her fascination with drug development. Jansen has led the development of the world’s two best-selling vaccines, against HPV and pneumococcus. Many who work at Pfizer say that Jansen is the “personification of the company’s urgency to take on the terrifying pandemic.” How does she do this you might ask? Well, she has learned tons from her 36-year career but she is best known for never sacrificing quality for speed, however, Pfizer was the first company to have their vaccine approved in the United States. Although Jansen is often not needed in the laboratory, she holds 650-person team Zoom meetings day and night to ensure that the odds of success for the vaccine are as high as she can make them.

Additionally, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, a Black scientist from North Carolina who is studying the Moderna vaccine, is largely responsible for encouraging the Black community to get vaccinated once accessible. Kizzy, while only 34 years old, spent a large portion of her career getting people of color interested in career options relating to science. Now, she is using the color of her skin to urge African Americans to get vaccinated. Black communities have been infected and killed at a disproportionate rate throughout this entire pandemic, hopefully, with an African American female on the frontlines alongside Moderna, they will no longer feel hesitant to trust the vaccine.

Finally, the woman who spent her career researching the liquid that everyone thinks can end this pandemic, mRNA (messenger RNA). Hungarian scientist Kaitlin Kariko spent the 1990s receiving refusals regarding her effort to utilize the power of mRNA to fight disease. Few had confidence in her which is why she failed at obtaining government and corporate funding to support her research. With no money to support her, she almost left the scientific academy, like many struggling scientists do. She rethought and decided to conduct “better” experiments with her collaborator at the University of Pennsylvania, Drew Weissman. Their findings have been further researched and expanded upon. With mRNA being a major component in fighting this pandemic, Kariko and Weissman are to thank for bringing to light the potential of mRNA on disease prevention.

While I am absolutely riveted by every individual's contributions to developing the vaccine, I am especially taken aback by the contributions made by women. Being a female in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers is certainly challenging considering the field is largely dominated by men with women only making up 28% of the workforce. Thankfully, those statistics didn’t stop Gilbert, Wei, Jansen, Kariko, and the countless other women who have helped to develop the vaccine. I hope to see that 28% increase significantly over time because if females can potentially end a global pandemic, then we can do anything.