With March being Women’s History Month, I found it fitting to write about the all-female team of rockstar scientists working on a breakthrough on a COVID-19 vaccine. This team is from the Novavax Lab in Gaithersburg, Maryland and they have been working tirelessly since January to create a vaccine for this deadly virus.
COVID-19 (coronavirus) originated in a market in Wuhan, China, with the World Health Organization’s China office hearing the first reports of cases on December 31, 2019. Since then, it has been growing rapidly and hitting countries such as India, Europe and the U.S., with the most significant outbreaks being in Italy, Iran, Spain and the United Kingdom. With over 3,000 people dead and another 90,000 infected worldwide, time is of the essence to create a vaccine.
Nationwide, scientists are working around the clock to find a vaccine for the virus. There have been some very promising early results from the drug chloroquine on treating coronavirus. Chloroquine is a widely prescribed anti-malaria pill that was first approved for use in the U.S. in 1949. Early laboratory research has shown encouraging signs to work against the virus. Now, let’s get back to talking about the team at Novavax.
The team is lead by Nita Patel, the director of vaccine development at Novavax Lab. When asked by ABC 7 reporter Victoria Sanchez about how the vaccine makes it to market and how it is being an all-women team encouraging young girls who are looking into science, Patel responded, saying, “Well, that’s encouraging for young girls to be a scientist. You know, I’m a woman, and that’s real encouragement to see that somebody, women, brought the vaccine to the market. That’s awesome.”
Patel followed that by saying, I think in science, it’s more common for women to be in the lab than the guys.”
A study conducted for the Unesco Institute for Statics said that “less than 30 percent of the world’s researchers are women.” Despite there being a demand for having women in science, they are still limited when it comes to policymaking. But in a year to 18 months, all of that could change thanks to Patel and her team.
Dr. Gregory Mark Glenn, Novavax’s president of research and development, confirmed that work on the vaccine began January 10, and the lab has not closed since. “Our goal is to show the vaccine could work, it’s safe and try to make, literally make a billion of doses. So that’s the aspiration,” Dr. Glenn explained. “Maybe in a year to 18 months, one might actually be deployable,” Glenn said.
Patel’s team has a sense of urgency to create a vaccine, with the timetable being a year to 18 months. Though more testing needs to be done, Patel and her team have three possible candidates for a vaccine and are busy working on one that will go to human trials. Novavax is in phase two of development for the vaccine, which means they are testing it on animals now. If that shows promising results, there may be two to three phases of human trials.
With the whole world panicking over this virus, these ladies are doing everything they can to create a vaccine sooner rather than later!