Short Wave - The Brazilian Scientists Inventing An mRNA Vaccine — And Sharing The Recipe

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

When Moderna and Pfizer first came out with their mRNA vaccines for COVID-19, supply was limited to rich countries and they did not share the details of how to create it. That left middle income countries like Brazil in the lurch. But for Brazilian scientists Patricia Neves and Ana Paula Ano Bom, that wasn't the end. They decided to invent their own mRNA vaccine. Their story, today: Aaron talks to global health correspondent Nurith Aizenman about the effort and how it has helped launch a wider global project to revolutionize access to mRNA vaccine technology.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hi there, shortwavers. Aaron Scott here with Global Health and Development correspondent, Nareet Eisenman. Hi, Aaron. Hello, Noreet. I understand we're going to hear some snippets from reporting you've been doing down in Brazil on a cutting-edge scientific collaboration.

Yes. In May, I headed to Rio de Janeiro, where I met some scientists working on new mRNA vaccines against COVID that could make this type of technology available to hundreds of millions of people in countries that, until now, have always been last in line to get the new stuff. Wow. So it sounds like it really could revolutionize who gets access to vaccines. Yes.

And that's what maybe you want to meet these scientists. This is our office. But what I didn't know was that I was also going to learn about the fascinating backstory of two of them, Patricia Nevis and Ana Paola Anobam. They work out of a room that's just big enough for their two desks pushed together. At first, they worried they wouldn't get much done because they'd have too much fun. No. She's my best friend.

That's Anabom. Ever since she and Nevis met in college more than 20 years ago, they've been inseparable, shopping, lunching, and most of all just talking. About anything, science, kids, husbands. This is Nevis. It's largely because of their friendship that this project came about. After college, Nevis went on to become an immunologist. All my background was in vaccines. Okay, so is Patricia Nevis the MRNA expert in the duo, I'm guessing?

Exactly. And for the last several years, she'd actually been trying to develop a vaccine-like treatment for breast cancer that used a similar type of MRNA technology to the COVID vaccines. And so back in October of 2020, when it became clear that Pfizer and Moderna's MRNA vaccines against COVID were probably going to work, Nevis got an idea. She thought, what if her team's technology could also be used in a COVID vaccine? I started saying, let's do COVID, let's do COVID. We need to prove that our RNA works. But to get MRNA into the human body, you need to encapsulate it in a tiny fat particle

using complex methods that only a few scientists in the world have figured out. Nevis's solution? Call up her bestie, and a Paola on a bum. After college, she had gone on to become a biochemist. On a bum's reply, it's a classic saying in Rio de Janeiro. Bore. It means let's go. Let's go. Because possibly the most important quality these two friends share is a willingness to go for goals,

even scientists at their own institute consider far-fetched. Yeah, we are innovative and I don't know, maybe crazy. Today on the show, the story of two friends trying to invent a new MRNA vaccine. And how they've helped launch a global project to revolutionize access to MRNA technology. I'm Nareid Eisenman. I'm Aaron Scott, and you're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from MPR. So, Neri, we heard Anobam joking there, but this effort Chi and Nevis decided to launch was going to be a pretty challenging thing to pull off, right? Yeah.

Madera and Pfizer didn't just have a huge head start. They're private U.S. and European companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. The Research and Manufacturing Institute, Nevis and Anabom work at, it's called the Biomankina's Via Cruz Foundation, is a public entity in Brazil. So far, Nevis and Anabom have spent about $1 million getting really far in proof of concept. Their entire budget to get to the point where Brazil could start manufacturing at scale is going to be about 50. million dollars. Yikes. I'm guessing that's not even the coffee and donuts budget for the big pharma drug development teams. Right. But, you know, it's not even just about the money.

This project has required a complete shift in strategy for Brazil, a totally new way of thinking about what the mission of its scientists should be. Huh, how so? Well, to understand that part of it, it helps to back up for a moment and meet someone else at their institute, the head of R&D there. His name is Sotiris Miselidis. I missed the days that I was in the lab. And technically he's Nevis and Anabom's boss. Sometimes I say, you know, let me come there and work with you, but at the moment I'm just trying to open the way for them to run. He says he sees Nevis and Anabombollah is like these Olympic-level runners, and his job is to clear the obstacles in their way.

And his role in this tale is actually a testament to how, as crucial as the scientists who do the inventing are to making major. research ventures happen, you know, the sexy science stuff, it also takes a visionary administrator. See, before the pandemic, virtually every time Miss Alidas's teams had tried to create an original vaccine, they were undercut by the pharmaceutical companies in wealthy countries, what's often called big pharma. When there is a specific need for a vaccine, our time to develop is more delayed than the big institutes in middle-income countries like his don't have anywhere near the same funding. And governments like Brazil's, understandably, want to provide new vaccines to their citizens as

quickly as possible. The upshot? If there is an emergency, and the big pharma has the vaccine, we are often obliged to interrupt our own development and accept a vaccine that is ready. By doing what's called a technology transfer. Essentially, the middle-income country takes a vaccine invented in a wealthy country, learns how to produce it, and then starts pumping out its own supply. Brazil has gotten really good at this. The trouble, it still requires the permission of the inventor of the vaccine. You have access of what the others want to give you, at the price they want to give you, at the numbers they want to give you. Which brings us back to Nevis and Anabom. What happened Noreep when they proposed inventing a new mRNA vaccine against COVID?

Well, at first it looked like the old pattern was set to repeat itself. When Misalides tried to get the funding, per usual he was told, just drop it. There were people that were pessimists and they said, well, you'll never go anywhere and we'll do a technology transfer anyway. And on that last point, the naysayers were right. Misalides helped Brazil reach a technology transfer deal with a global North company, Europe-based Oxford AstraZeneca. And in a few months, Brazil was making massive quantities. of that COVID vaccine. Remandes to vaccinate 90% of the Brazilian population.

But this time, Misalides also insisted they still shouldn't give up on the homegrown effort, the one to invent Brazil's very own MRI vaccine, even if it was going to take them years longer than Moderna and Pfizer to complete it. If you don't bother, you'll never change. You'll always be at the mercy of big pharma, at the mercy of richer countries.

You need to have a... moment where you change, you come out of that, and this was a moment. And just to be clear, the vaccine that Brazil got from Oxford, AstraZeneca was a more traditional vaccine technology and not MRNA, right? Right. And it helped Misalides' case that MRNA vaccines aren't only useful against COVID. Misalius was able to point out that this is a totally new technology that will probably be used to fight all manner of diseases. But ironically, Misalides probably got his biggest from Moderna and Pfizer, the only companies that had an MRI vaccine.

You might remember that for months, their supply was limited and they pretty much only sold it to rich countries. Right. Brazil proposed doing a tech transfer so it could produce some in-country. Neither company went for it. Ms. Alides gave me kind of a wry smile when he said, That was a brilliant moment in some way. They gave us the push to continue, so we have our own independence.

And this is not just about Brazil's independence. Neves and Anabom pointed out to me that for all the resource limits of working at a public agency like Biomangina's Fia Cruz, there is one advantage. It's not for profit. We are not interested in money. To provide vaccines to whom most need. It's the main driver for us. So if the team succeeds in making this new MRNA vaccine, they'll do something moderna and Pfizer have balked at. We are interceding opening this technology. Share the patent and the manufacturing process with vaccine makers around the world.

They want this coronavirus vaccine and any future vaccines for other diseases using their MRNA technology to be made as quickly and as widely available as possible to low and middle-income countries, countries that are normally at the back of the line when it comes to getting cutting-edge vaccines. Nevis says the unequal rollout of vaccines during the pandemic made her determined to end that. To see people dying because of disease that already have vaccine, it's just not acceptable. Also, by inventing the vaccines themselves, middle-income scientists can prioritize an approach that's particularly well-suited to countries with limited resources. What does that look like in practice?

Well, to explain, Nevis took me into one of her labs. Yes, this is the microbiology part. A team member is using a pipette to drop liquid ingredients into a tiny test tube, including the genetic material of some proteins found on the coronavirus. We would put two microlitters. Okay, here, and this tube.

It's pretty moving to look at it. Nevis says the process creates MRNA that works very similarly to the ones in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, but with an extra feature. This MRNA is what's called self-amplifying. You have some messages inside the mRNA that make this RNA replicate itself. You only need to put a little bit in the body, and the body takes care of making the rest. Among the benefits for lower in middle-income countries, it's cheaper to produce because the doses is lower. Ah, literally the raw material is less.

Wow, so they're really advancing the technology. So what is their timeline for completing the vaccine? Well, the team is on track to have the vaccine ready for release in manufacturing its scale within about a year and a half. Part of this comes down to a major boost that the team got last September, when the World Health Organization made it a centerpiece of a new global initiative. WHO officials have designated the Brazil team, paired with an Argentine company, along with a separate team in South Africa,

to act as these hubs that will not just figure out how to make mRNA vaccines against COVID, but with WHO's support, teach that knowledge to manufacturers from low and middle-income countries around the world. But a really interesting twist on all this is that because the work they're doing is so similar, the South Africans and the Latin Americans have started this whole collaboration with each other. And on my last day in Brazil, I was there as they all gathered for a visit. And it was so striking to see all these central players in the cutting-edge world of MRNA vaccines. And yet pretty much no one from the wealthy countries that, until now, have dominated vaccine invention. I think the holdup is 50 moles.

That's the head of South Africa's effort, Karen Fenner of Afrogen biologics and vaccines. She was trading ideas about equipment with one of the Argentines. So my recommendation would be, if you can, to get a bench top system. Yeah, and in a corner, Nevis was observing all this with just this beaming smile. She says scientists from middle-income countries have been wanting to launch this kind of direct collaboration with each other for years now. It took the COVID crisis to make it possible, and so watching it now? That's the most exciting thing for me. because we are not depending on others to do this.

Here's to finding a silver lining in the pandemic. Nareet, thank you so much for bringing us this story of science, perseverance, and friendship. Glad to do it. This episode was produced for Shortwave by Margaret Serino and edited by Rebecca Ramirez. It was edited for broadcast by Vicki Valentine. Fact-checking by Rachel Carlson and Audio Engineering by Brian Jarbo. Before we head out, quick shout out to our Shortwave Plus listeners.

We very much appreciate you, and we thank you for being subscribers. Shortwave Plus helps support our show. So if you're a regular listener, we'd love for you to join, and that way you can enjoy the show without any sponsor interruptions. Find out more at mpr.plus.org slash shortwave. I'm Aaron Scott. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from MPR.