Journey

As the spread of the coronavirus continues, health officials have warned Britain to brace itself for more cases. This comes after the first London victim was confirmed yesterday. So as the number of those infected continues to rise, what can we do to stop the spread? Well, one woman at the forefront of developing a life-saving vaccine to combat the virus is scientist Katie Broderick. She joins us now, and welcome to you. It’s so lovely to have you here. It’s one of those briefs I’ve read this morning. I was like, I can’t wait to meet you and ask all these questions. You studied genetics at Glasgow University, you completed your PhD there, then you took a job at the University of California where you now live. And it’s while working there, working for a pharmaceutical company that you’ve found successful vaccines in the past for all sorts of things. So just tell us what you’ve worked on previously.

Yep, so my personal specialty is infectious diseases. So I’m really interested in Ebola, Zika, MERS, HIV, a variety of different things, but obviously recently our focus has been completely on the novel coronavirus.

(So her entire career is either knowingly or unknowingly on weaponized narratives…)

So when did you first hear about it? When was it first on your radar?

Yeah, to be honest, it was in the news. It wasn’t through any scientific means. I just read it on the BBC website on the 31st of December when at home with the kids. And I thought that’s interesting from a scientific perspective, but it wasn’t terribly worrying. But over the next few days, then as the case numbers increased significantly, then I was on the phone to my colleagues saying, you know, this is really something we want to take seriously.

And so we have to be grateful here that the Chinese posted the genetic code because it was from that that you were able to start working on it, understanding what was actually happening here. So once you have that code, why is that important? What does that unlock for you?

Yeah, absolutely, and I have to thank the Chinese authorities because without that we really couldn’t have done anything. So because we use a DNA medicine vaccine, we need the genetic code to be able to design the vaccine. So as soon as we received that code, we were able to immediately start designing the vaccine. And in three hours, we had a design ready and raring to go.

Three hours? So three hours to design a vaccine? And how have you managed to do that when in the past, it took such a long time?

Yeah. So the vaccines that you and I are really familiar with, what we would call traditional vaccines, and they’re based on a protein, which is different from the type of vaccines that we develop at INOVIO. And they take, in general, two to three years to develop. So you can imagine in an outbreak setting, like what we’re seeing in China, two or three years isn’t going to help. So that’s where this new technology comes in, where we can really rapidly make a vaccine.

But it’s still not quick, it’s still not Okay, there it is. That’s fine. Let’s get it all out there.

Exactly. It’s not overnight. And it’s important, it’s not overnight because you need to perform the proper checks and balances to ensure it’s safe and it’s effective. So we’re doing it as fast as we can, but it’s certainly not going to be tomorrow.

It has to be tested.

Exactly.

So is it right that it’ll be June before it’s gone through its tests?

We’re hoping, um, June would be the first time we’ll get it into human subjects for what we call clinical testing.

And then when will it become available?

That’s kind of not necessarily up to us. And that’s when the regulatory authorities then get involved and say, okay, we think it’s effective enough that we should roll it out to the general public.

So when you’ve made it and it has been approved, how much do you have to make?

Well, in China, we’re talking about 1.4 billion people, you know, in the United States, we’re talking about 300 million people. So we’re talking about huge amounts of vaccine. So you might even have the best vaccine in the world, but if you can only produce a few thousand doses, it’s not really going to make an impact.

And so one of the most important things for you guys, I guess, is the investment behind it in order to manufacture something like this on that scale.

Absolutely. And we’re really honored to be one of four worldwide entities to have received partnership funding from an organization called CEPI, which it’s offices are based here in London. And their mission was set up to respond to vaccine virus outbreaks.

Is it the one that has the backing of Bill Gates? (Um yes – CEPI “IS” Gates… Bill Gates founded CEPI with Wellcome Trust director Jeremy Farrar… WHO had a influenza vaccine virtual stockpile in 2019 including “experimental” vaccine stockpiles in collaboration with CEPI and GAVI. (See Tabletop Exercises > 2019 (Oct 18) Event 201) and Jane Halton (former Secretary of the Australian Department of Finance among many other Conflict$ including banking, ID2020, ABS, the advisory to the PM during Covid, attended that Event 201 Tabletop as the Australian rep) and has been the CHAIR of CEPI from 2018)

Exactly. And the Wellcome Trust and a variety of different other government agencies. (including DARPA…!! )

And so how confident are you that, I mean, let’s assume that the vaccine works, confident that it will be out in enough time because of how fast it seems to be spreading.

Yeah, and that’s always the big question, Phil, to be honest. And you know, I’d love to be able to come on in a week’s time and say, you know, the outbreak is really deteriorating, but there isn’t really any sign of that. And so I think we always have to plan with a mind that this is going to be around in six months and a year. And so then a vaccine would be very, very important in the fight against this spread.

And so hopefully all things being good, the distribution will start. And how does that work? Who gets it first?

Yeah. So obviously the first protocol is healthcare workers because they’re the men and women, in this case, in the NHS, who would be fighting the virus, you know, taking care of the people who are actually sick. So we need to protect them first. Then you would probably go with people who have what we call underlying illnesses, which are the ones who seem to be unfortunately dying from the virus. And then you would scale it up when you’ve protected those two groups of people.

Do you think what we’re seeing, the numbers that we’re saying is just the tip of the iceberg?

You’ve got to watch about scare mongering, and you know, I’m not an epidemiologist, I’m just a scientist, but certainly it’s very concerning the number of cases that we’re seeing. Today there’s been a huge number of jump in the number of cases. So I’ve heard a lot on the news about this is tailing off. Certainly what I’m seeing, I don’t see any evidence of that.

So you’re doing this incredible job, you’re doing this incredible work that hopefully is going to go on to save lives of 100,000 millions of people for you as a mum, as a woman. You’re trying to combine this as well as putting the kids to bed at night, doing the school run. How many hours are you sleeping at the moment?

Not much, not much at the moment, yeah. I just think, you know, I’ve got this duty, this responsibility, you know, with the training I have to kind of do whatever I can with my team and everyone working on it to try and make an impact, because this is a pretty critical situation, but my kids are my world and, you know, they’re also kind of a way to de-stress, right? And not kind of just think about this 24/7.

Quarantine seems to be the answer at the moment. I think the biggest outbreak outside of China is on the cruise ship. So is quarantine the answer?

I think at the moment, because we know so little about the virus, I think it’s the best policy, you know, because we don’t really know the roots of spread and such like quarantine for 14 days seems to be the safest plan for everyone.

You study viruses very closely under the microscope, you look at them and you say, you know, the damage that they do to us, that they are actually beautiful to look at.

Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve seen pictures of the coronavirus, but I think it’s incredible. It almost looks sort of alien-like. It’s, they’re very beautiful, but so small, you know, it’s amazing the damage…

And they still continue to outwit us.

Completely. I mean, think of HIV. It’s been around for 30 plus years and we still haven’t got a vaccine against it.

And so, because this sort of epidemic that we’re seeing now, are we more likely to witness something like this happening again and again because of the way we live?

Unfortunately, yes. I mean, I’ll give myself as an example. I’m going to leave here and jump on a plane for 12 hours to California just because global travel is so, an every day occurrence, people move around the world so quickly today. Also, population levels have never been greater, so there’s a huge impact to that. And climate change is a major player in these viral outbreaks as well.

Thank you. Will you thank your team on our behalf? Thank you for everything you’re doing to try and protect us.

Yeah. Thanks very much for having me.