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(dramatic upbeat music)

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As authorities struggle to respond

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to the COVID-19 viral pandemic,

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everyday life has drastically altered.

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By travel restrictions, school closures,

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and diminished business and social interactions.

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It is the most extensive lockdown

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the world has ever seen.

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But even as much of our world

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appears on the verge of completely shutting down,

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some among us jump into action.

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(dramatic upbeat music)

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From the outset of the outbreak,

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the scientific community quickly geared-up

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for an urgent battle.

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Each pathogen has its own path

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that it takes in that context.

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And this one has surprised many of us

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in terms of the speed with which it spread

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through the Chinese population and then, subsequently,

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the speed with which it has

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impacted other countries more globally.

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This is a disease that is completely new

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so we don't know really a lot.

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Every day that goes by we learn more.

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At the same time, this is a very fast moving target.

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And so, the more data we have, the better it is.

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And that knowledge

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forms the backbone of a critical quest

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to develop a vaccine to help defeat COVID-19.

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(dramatic upbeat music)

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The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations,

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or CEPI, supports vaccine research around the world.

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But the transition from theoretical endeavors

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to real-world needs happened more quickly

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than anyone anticipated or hoped for.

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This is the most frightening disease

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I've ever encountered in my career,

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and that includes Ebola,

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it includes MERS, it includes SARS.

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And it's frightening

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because of the combination of infectiousness

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and a lethality that appears to be manyfold higher than flu.

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But despite the urgency

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of the COVID-19 pandemic,

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epidemiologists and government health officials

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must face a harsh reality.

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Vaccine development and testing takes time,

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at least 12 to 18 months.

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The vaccine is quite down the road at this point.

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And now, there are a lot of programs

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are starting worldwide to find those weapons

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to defy the disease.

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We'd be giving this

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to normal people to prevent infection.

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So you must be sure.

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The edict of medicine,

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first, do no harm.

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So, we need to make sure it's safe,

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and we need to make sure it works.

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That entire process will take at least a year

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and a year-and-a-half.

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(dramatic upbeat music)

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Professor Paul Young

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leads one of the most promising

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research operations at the moment

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with his team at Australia's University of Queensland.

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Thanks, in part, to a CEPI-funded slight headstart.

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For the past six years,

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they focus their work on broad-based vaccine modeling,

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using mRNA coding, an adaptable methodology

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able to quickly respond to new viruses as they emerge.

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So we've developed a generic platform technology

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for vaccine production

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that could be applicable to a wide range of viruses.

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And that's why we've been able to apply it

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to this previously unknown virus, relatively rapidly.

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Amid the initial escalation

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of the public health emergency

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in the city of Wuhan,

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the Chinese released the genetic sequencing

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of this new Coronavirus, COVID-19,

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on January 10th of 2020.

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And as soon as that was done,

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we began work on developing our vaccine approach to it.

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We made more than 200 different versions

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before we settled on one particular vaccine candidate.

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And that has already gone into animal studies

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to prove that we actually induce an immune response

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that is likely to protect animals.

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Once we've done that

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and we've also gone through toxicity studies,

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then we'll hopefully be ready to enter clinical trials,

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human clinical trials, in late June.

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(dramatic piano music)

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COVID-19's spike like structures

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exhibit a specific protein to gain entry into its host cells

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in order to replicate.

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One of the prime immune responses, an antibody response,

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that targets that particular protein

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on the surface of the virus.

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And that can generate a neutralizing activity,

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or a killing activity that destroys the virus.

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Young's line of attack

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aims to unleash the body's defenses

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by introducing this protein.

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Stabilized, or clamped in position,

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as it would appear on the virus's surface.

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So that when we vaccinate individuals,

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their immune response sees this protein

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as though it was the virus itself.

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And they will mount an immune response

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that can then become their memory response

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if they subsequently encounter the live virus.

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So, we're trying to mimic the outer exterior of the virus

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by generating this particular protein

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as the vaccine immunogen.

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(dramatic upbeat music)

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Disease pandemics litter human history.

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But vaccination technology

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is a relatively recent tool in our medical arsenal.

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One that arose kind of by accident.

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A response to smallpox in the 18th century,

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thanks to the discriminating eye

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of Dr. Edward Jenner and others.

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People used to say

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find a milkmaid, she'll be the most beautiful girl in town.

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Jenner deduced the women's work

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impacted their appearance.

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In putting two and two together,

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the reason they never got smallpox

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is because by milking their cows,

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they got blisters on their hands, which we call cowpox.

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And getting blisters on their hands

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prevented them, immunized them, we would now say,

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from getting smallpox.

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So he created the first vaccine.

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A thread soaked in a concoction of cowpox material

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and exposed it to patients

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by cutting a small slit in their arm.

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And it wasn't 'til almost a hundred years later

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that we began to understand

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that there was such a thing as an infectious disease

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and that the reason

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people didn't get most infectious diseases twice

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is because they were immunized.

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As scientific understanding grew,

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so too did the use of vaccines to do battle

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against some of our most feared diseases like polio.

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The parents of 440,000 grammar school children

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in 44 states gave their permission

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for injections of the preventive series of three Salk shots.

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The first three children inoculated

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were Dr. Salk's own sons.

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But thousands of others across the country

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soon joined them

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for the largest field test in medical history.

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To this day,

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smallpox is the only eradicated human disease.

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But thanks to global vaccination efforts,

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polio remains only in small pockets.

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Still dangerous, but held largely at bay.

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I joined this hospital in 1990.

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So 20 years back,

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there were 3,000 new cases of paralytic poliomyelitis

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in the city of Delhi alone.

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Today, we have none in Delhi and in the last year,

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I think we've had none in the country.

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(crowd murmuring)

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Vaccines are very important for producing,

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what we call, herd immunity.

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And herd immunity is really

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the ways in which we can offset

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the risk of large spread of disease

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by immunizing a large portion of the community from it.

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Which means it's much harder for it to spread.

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And that's helped control

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many childhood diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella.

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And although a lot of people think measles is not so bad,

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I had it when I was six-years-old

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and it seemed pretty bad at the time.

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But nowadays, we have a vaccine for it

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and people don't remember that

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there have been many documented epidemics

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in which measles killed 30% of the people it infected.

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You know, after the eradication of smallpox

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and as polio eradication efforts

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really became more successful,

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in the mid-to-late 20th century

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there was a feeling that perhaps the human race

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had gotten infectious diseases licked

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and they were on the retreat.

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And perhaps, we could conceive of an era

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or a time when infectious disease was not necessarily

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a global health threat.

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But by the 1970s and 80s,

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previously unknown diseases emerged,

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like Ebola and HIV/AIDS.

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So diseases like these were utterly new to science

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and figuring out ways to respond to

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what we now see

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as newer, novel pathogens

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has become the battle of the 21st century.

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Enter the most

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recent coronaviruses: SARS, MERS,

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and now, COVID-19.

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A global pandemic

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which demands a collaborative global response.

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I think this is the moment to think

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open data and open science.

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That would really make a difference.

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One thing that a major epidemic does

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is it galvanizes a lot of attention, a lot of funding,

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a lot of focus on these diseases themselves.

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There are multiple vaccine approaches going forward,

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including our own.

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And we're all of the belief

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that we're not racing each other.

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This is a race against the virus

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and whoever gets there first in terms of a viable vaccine,

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we can all cheer for that.

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Indeed, CEPI supports several research teams

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engaged in the Coronavirus fight,

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including the NIH Vaccine Program

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that went forward with the first human trials

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on March 16th in Seattle,

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one of America's first COVID-19 hotspots.

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It was easy.

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It was just like a flu shot.

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I hope that we get to a working vaccine quickly

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and that we can save lives.

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Still, Australian Virologist, Paul Young,

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realizes finding a safe vaccine that works

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is just the start.

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Perhaps the bigger challenge

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will be executing on production and deployment.

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The 64 million dollar question

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is whether we can get this vaccine out into the community

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in time for it to make a difference.

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There's absolutely no doubt that deployment

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of the final vaccine is as big a hurdle

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as actually generating the vaccine itself.

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If we're dealing with a viral pathogen

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that is affecting, essentially, the global community,

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manufacturing that at scale, at single sites,

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is probably not going to be viable.

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So the real issues of the effectiveness of the vaccine

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become almost secondary to our ability to deliver it

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to a broad, global population.

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Young's answer?

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To essentially proceed on a dual track.

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What the global community needs to think about

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is a completely radical way of approaching this question.

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If we can ramp-up that manufacture

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at the same time we're determining efficacy,

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then hopefully we'll be able to deploy a lot earlier

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than what a traditional pathway

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of vaccine production would mean.

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Viruses like Coronavirus

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have high mutation rates

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which allow them to adjust to different environments

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and replicate efficiently.

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Evidence suggests two strains of COVID-19 already exist.

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But while different strains of influenza

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can require different vaccines,

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that's not expected in the fight against COVID-19.

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At least not yet.

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Whilst we are seeing mutations accumulate,

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we don't believe that they're going to have

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a significant impact on vaccines

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and whether those vaccines are going to be effective.

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So I don't see this virus moving towards

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a more potent, more highly dangerous virus.

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I think the real challenge with this particular pathogen

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is its capacity to spread.

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And it's doing that very efficiently.

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Of course, it's plenty dangerous at the moment

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and doesn't appear to be going anywhere, anytime soon.

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Able to survive in the air for up to four hours

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and remain viable on a variety of everyday surfaces,

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from one to four days,

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COVID-19's endurance boosts its transmission.

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It is a lengthy one.

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This is a virus that's going to be with us for some time.

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There are many epidemiologists who think

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that the virus is likely to become globally endemic

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and be with us in perpetuity.

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If I had to bet,

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I would think that that is the most probable scenario.

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And that just amps up the urgency

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for a vaccine to protect communities

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from COVID-19's most dire consequences.

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But until any such vaccination

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can be adequately developed and deployed,

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the battle against this deadly infection

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must take place on another front altogether.

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Vaccines have their place in an outbreak response.

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But, obviously, the time it takes to develop them

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means that standard public health measures

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right upfront are really where we need to place

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a lot of emphasis at the moment as well.

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(dramatic upbeat music)