The trouble with a Nobel for mRNA COVID vaccines

CategoryAwards

Last Updated05/10/2023

The 2023 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was recently awarded to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman.
They won the award for developing the mRNA vaccine technology that became the foundation for history’s fastest vaccine development programme during the COVID19 pandemic.

Such vaccines make use of the messenger RNA molecules that tell the body’s cells what proteins to build.
Here, the mRNA is coded to tell the cells to recreate the spike protein of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19.
A coronavirus vaccine based on mRNA, once injected into the body, will instruct the body’s cells to create copies of the spike protein.
In turn, this is expected to prompt the immune cells to create antibodies to fight it.
These antibodies will remain in the blood and fight the real virus if and when it infects the human body.

It acknowledges work that has created benefits “for all mankind”.
However, if we had to be stricter about holding scientific accomplishments up to this standard, the subset of mRNA vaccines used during the COVID-19 pandemic may not meet it.
Yet, they deserved to win the prize for their scientific accomplishments.
Instead, their triumph tells us what “for all mankind” should really mean.

A significant portion of the foundational research behind the development of new drugs and vaccines is conducted using government funding.
- It involves the identification of potential biomolecular targets within the body that could be targeted by a drug to treat a specific disease.
- This is followed by the search for suitable chemical candidates.
The estimated cost and time for this phase are $1 billion to $2.5 billion and several decades respectively.
Companies subsequently commoditise and commercialise these entities, raking in millions in profits.
- This is typically at the expense of the same people whose taxes funded the fundamental research.
The current drug and vaccine development model encourages innovation and the resulting competition helps reduce prices.
However, one cannot deny the ‘double-spend’ it imposes on consumers including governments.
Additionally, it also encourages a profit-driven mindset among the companies involved in the development and production of these products.

After Moderna and Pfizer began producing their mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, they were mired in North American and European countries’ determination to make sure they had ample for themselves.
Their use in other countries (including India) was also complicated by protracted negotiations over pricing and liability.

COVAX is one of three pillars of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.
It was launched in April 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Commission and France in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is an effort to ensure that people in all corners of the world will get access to Covid-19 vaccines once they are available, regardless of their wealth.
However, this programme fell far short of its targets.
India, Russia, and China exported billions of doses of their vaccines, but their efforts were beset by concerns.
It included concerns like overestimated manufacturing capacity (in India’s case) and quality (in Russia’s and China’s case).
There were reports of several countries in Africa having to throw away lakhs of vaccine doses because they had been exported too close to their expiry dates.

A counterexample to the path that Dr. Kariko followed is Corbevax.
Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, and the Texas Children’s Hospital Centre for Vaccine Development developed this protein subunit vaccine.
They licensed it to India’s Biological E for manufacturing but did not patent it.
It helped in the development and distribution of a low cost COVID19 vaccine to people of the world without patent limitation.

We cannot blame our scientists for trying to profit from their work.
The mRNA vaccine could have benefited everyone during the pandemic, but it did not.
So, history should remember what actually happened during the pandemic and what the 2023 Medicine Nobel claims happened differently.