Len Rosenberg:
Hello and welcome. My name is Len Rosenberg, a proud member of the Class of 1989, where I serve as president of the alumni club of Northern California and a member of the Alumni Association Board of Directors. It is my pleasure to welcome you to today's program on behalf of the Alumni Association between two of this year's Alumni Achievement Award winners. We have Dr. Susan Weiss, Class of '71, professor and vice chair of the Department of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. And co-director of the Penn Center for Research on coronavirus and Other Emerging Pathogens.
Len Rosenberg:
And also Dr. Drew Weissman '81, Master's and a parent of a member of the Class of '15. Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine also at the University of Pennsylvania. Today's program will be moderated by Dr. Arthur Kaplan class of '71, Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics at the New York University, Langone Medical Center, and the founding director of the Division of Medical Ethics. We're delighted to welcome you, our alumni, parents, Brandeis National Committee members and friends around the world. Thank you so much for joining us today. Now to introduce our speakers.
Len Rosenberg:
Susan Weiss, Class of '71 is professor and vice chair of microbiology as I said at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and a pioneer in the study of coronaviruses. Her scientific research as a coronavirusologists over the past four decades has helped with the understanding of the 2002 SARS, the 2012 MERS outbreaks, as well as COVID-19. She serves as co-director of the Penn Center for Research on Coronavirus and Other Emerging Pathogens established in March, and was recently featured in the BBC program, The Virus Hunters.
Len Rosenberg:
Drew Weissman, Class of '81, parenting Class of '15 is a professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. His collaborative research with former colleague Katalin Karikó into the modification on nucleic acids for RNA therapeutics and vaccines, is credited with laying the groundwork for the COVID-19 vaccines created by Moderna, thank you. And Pfizer. Dr. Weissman, along with Dr. Karikó were awarded this year's Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award in basic medical research from Brandeis and the Rosenstiel Foundation.
Len Rosenberg:
And Arthur Caplan, class of 71 is the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics at the New York University, Langone Medical Center, and the founding director of the Division of Medical Ethics. Prior to coming to NYU the School of Medicine. Prior to coming to NYU, the School of Medicine. Dr. Caplan was the Sidney D. Caplan Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, where he created the Center for Bioethics and the Department of Medical Ethics. Dr. Kaplan, Weiss and Weissman welcome. Thank you, take it away.
Art Caplan:
Thanks very much, Len. First I'm going to flash off my Brandeis gear, which I managed to dig out from somewhere. So, let's all acknowledge the role that our speakers have played in helping us through this COVID epidemic hopefully rooted in their early science interests at Brandeis. I'm going to let each of them have five minutes or so, lay out some opening remarks that will give us some perspective on how important it has been to have basic science knowledge in place.
Art Caplan:
To have people who are ready to work with industry, who have been working hard in a space that many might have said would not be as productive, but it's turned out to be of obvious international implication and duly acknowledged and something that we have to attribute great credit for both of their work. So Susan, why don't I start with you, and give you the floor and then we'll go over to Drew.
Susan Weiss:
Okay. So, as Len said, I've been working with coronaviruses for a very long time. So, I think I'm going to give a brief history of human coronavirus research leading up to the current pandemic. And I'll try to interweave just a little bit about my own career during this time period. So, the first notice really of coronavirus in the scientific literature is back in the '60s and '70s. We knew that coronavirus cause the common cold OC43 and 229E. They were really relatively obscure at the time, but I think now we all heard about some of these viruses. So, at that point, there was other research going on into murine coronavirus, which is a mouse model for hepatitis and encephalitis.
Susan Weiss:
And there was also quite a lot of research on animal coronaviruses of which there're coronavirus is that infect just about every animal and they've been important from a vaccine perspective. So, the early research was mostly done on these animal model viruses. And so, I started getting interested in this in the late '70s, when I was a postdoc at UCSF, working in a different field. I wanted to find something to start my own lab on when I was going to be an independent assistant professor. So, I looked around in literature and I found this obscure group of viruses called Coronaviruses.
Susan Weiss:
And they looked really ripe for the picking to start to work out because they had this interesting biology, they were human viruses. And it looked like it was something you could actually work on in the lab at that time. So, in 1980, I came to the University of Pennsylvania and started my own lab to study the basic biology and pathogenesis of coronaviruses. So, from that time until about 2000, there were a small group of people working very hard on these viruses. Were basically ignored because they weren't considered very important.
Susan Weiss:
We learned a lot I mean, the spike protein that we all know about now that the vaccine target was identified in the late '70s, as the protein that attached to host cells. We knew that it was cleaved and it caused cell to cell fusion. A lot of the things that were important in really understanding the viruses later on. We learned how the viruses got in the cells, out the cells, the immune response really, quite a lot. They were cloned and sequenced, so that in 2002, when SARS coronavirus, the first one emerged in Southern China it was quickly identified as the coronavirus, a lot by its morphology and by its sequence.
Susan Weiss:
And that epidemic was really pretty horrifying at the time. It's been dwarfed by SARS too, but it lasted only about eight months. And we learned some important things about that. And I think the reason it didn't last longer was that people that were infected were sick and they could be isolated. And so like I said within about eight months it was pretty much contained, and it was mostly contained to China and Hong Kong. In the wake of SARS, we learned that viruses like SARS were found in bats, as a huge reservoir for coronaviruses and other lethal human viruses. Something that's still really interesting to understand why bats carry viruses and don't get sick from them.
Susan Weiss:
Also in the wake of SARS, we learned about other human coronaviruses HKU1 and NL63 also non-lethal viruses. And then as I said the SARS epidemic was gone and things were pretty quiet in the land of SARS coronaviruses, until about 2012 when Middle East respiratory coronavirus emerged in Saudi Arabia. This virus also had its origin in bats and it was transmitted from bats, into camels, into humans. And it turns out that camels are a very large reservoir for MERS and people are still getting infected at some low level with MERS coronavirus. It's actually more lethal than SARS-1 or SARS-2 but doesn't seem to be quite as contagious.
Susan Weiss:
There seems to be reciprocal relationship between contagion and pathogenesis, at least among these lethal coronaviruses. And so then again, things were pretty quiet. And then in 2019, as we all know, late in December, SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Wuhan, China, a different part of China from SARS-1. And as far as we know or the most informed would say that SARS-2 also had its origin in bats. It was not made by humans and came out of bats. It's adapting to humans now, we don't know if there was an intermediate species. But there's a lot of work actively trying to figure that out. And I can say also that we're now confronted with these variants, which I think are really SARS-2 adopting from whatever species it was found in last into humans.
Susan Weiss:
So, my lab is evolved during all this time. We worked a lot on MERS hepatitis virus, which really did teach us a lot about the human viruses. We've worked a little bit on SARS, and now we work on MERS and SARS-CoV-2 too. And I guess we're really basic science lab, we're trying to understand how these viruses interact with their host cell, in particular the innate immune response. And we know from both for COVID-19 disease and for animal models that the inability to respond with a robust interferon response is associated with pretty severe disease. So, we think that's an important thing to study. Just one other thing I'll just mention before I stop.
Susan Weiss:
The first meeting of coronavirusologists was held in 1980 in Germany, and there were about 60 people at that meeting. And that was the whole field. By 2003, after SARS, that meeting in the Netherlands had hundreds and hundreds of attendees, and the 15th meeting was supposed to be held in the Netherlands last year, but had to be postponed because of the pandemic. It's going to be held this year but still virtually. So, I'll stop about there. That's where we are in human coronavirus pandemics.
Art Caplan:
Thank you, Susan. We'll come back and pursue some of those interesting career developments that position you to be knowledgeable about where we are now. Drew, you want to take the floor? You're muted, sorry.
Drew Weissman:
Thank you very much. So, when I was in Brandeis, I learned about research and started doing basic science research, and decided that's what I love. And I actually got a master's degree while I was doing my bachelor's degree, went to medical school in Boston after that. Continued my training, went to the National Institutes of Health, where I did a fellowship Tony Fauci's lab. And then came to Penn in 1997 to set up my own lab. I had previously worked on immunopathogenesis, so understanding how the immune system interacts with viruses. And with a particular interest in a cell called the dendritic cell. That's the cell that starts all immune reactions.
Drew Weissman:
When I got to Penn, we started doing vaccine research. And that's when I met Katalin Karikó. And Kati was in neurosurgery and like to deliver RNA to different things, but hadn't gotten very far. So, we started to work together, and we made a lot of understandings and observations. And that led us to figure out that RNA was highly inflammatory. So, when you injected it into an animal, the animal got sick. And our goal was to make vaccines and therapeutics, and you can't give a drug that makes somebody sick. So, we figured out how to get rid of that inflammation. And that's really the groundbreaking finding that's allowed us to make the vaccine platform, and for Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech to produce the incredibly efficacious vaccines that are currently being given around the world.
Drew Weissman:
It was a lot of years. So, Kati and I started around 1998. People would brush us off, they would say, "Oh, RNA who wants to work with that?" For many, many years, we would submit grants, they would get, not funded. The reviewers would say, "Oh, who cares about RNA." And it took us many years before we got money, we got papers, and we got recognition that RNA was a good therapeutic. And then COVID-19 hit. And we worked with BioNTech and Moderna use the same platform, and very quickly developed these incredibly efficacious vaccines. Right now, my lab is continuing our work on vaccines, and on RNA therapeutics.
Drew Weissman:
We're working on vaccines for the variants that keep appearing and are going to keep appearing until we get this pandemic under control. But we're also looking at other vaccines. And one in particular, we're working on a PAM coronavirus vaccine. So, as Susan just mentioned, we've had at least three outbreaks of coronaviruses in the past 20 years. You have to assume there's going to be more. So, last summer, we started working on a vaccine that would protect against all bat coronaviruses that have the potential to infect humans.
Drew Weissman:
So, while 10 months is pretty quick to make a vaccine, the world would still shut down for a year, year and a half. Our goal is to make a vaccine that will be ready to give to people the day the first epidemic comes out. And we've got lots of other platforms we're working on.
Art Caplan:
Fascinating review the evolution of RNA is a tool and something to work on. So, what we're going to do now is I'm going to fire up some questions, since I have the privilege of being the moderator. But you all in the audience can ask questions through the chat box and Q&A, either one I think will work. I believe that's right Len. So, we'll keep looking there if you have a question. I want to emphasize and go back to Susan first. The role of basic science here in terms of being prepared.
Art Caplan:
So Susan, you said you saw an empty, if you will space where coronavirus where many years ago? And you said it's somewhat rectified now due to outbreaks and more people taking an interest. Should we be worried about other areas where viruses could break out that are not getting attention right now? Is there similar empty niches that are threatening? Do you worry about that?
Susan Weiss:
I'm sure there are, I don't know what they are. And not only viruses, but any kind of research area that seems obscure and unimportant could change a lot over time. I mean, when the first SARS epidemic came out, my small group of colleagues that were working on these viruses, we were really shocked. We were all calling each other up on the phone just absolutely amazed that it was a coronavirus, because we had no clue that could happen. Because all the other coronaviruses were either common cold or infected animals.
Art Caplan:
And let me ask you a related question to that. It seems to me one thing we need around the world is better surveillance of outbreaks. What's happening either in animals you told us about the role that bats play here. What could we do, lessons learned for better surveillance watching whether it's flu or I don't know whatever might be breaking out? Do we need an improvement for international surveillance of infectious agents?
Susan Weiss:
I think we probably do. I mean, there are people looking at bats now for viruses, probably not enough. But not only bats because so far the three coronaviruses have been transmitted through intermediate species, so that might be a place. Although for the MERS, camels actually are a reservoir. Many, many camels in the Middle East and Africa harbor MERS, so you might find that. Whereas for SARS, it seems like it was a kind of a one chance thing where it transferred. I just forgot to mention it was transmitted from a bat to a civet and then to a human. So, the civets are not a reservoir. So, I think we need to look all over.
Art Caplan:
And related to that question. Why is it that these viruses, the coronaviruses have different levels of infectivity and if you will lethality to put it in more ordinary terms? It seems that some coronavirus circulate around, a lot of them don't do much to us if you give us the sniffles. Some seem to cause us to keel over dead. What's going on there?
Susan Weiss:
That is something that we really don't understand. I mean, for example, the human coronavirus NL63 uses the same cellular receptor ACE2, as SARS-1 and SARS-2. We don't really understand that, SARS-1 and SARS-2 behave quite differently. And they're very similar. So, I didn't really say this, but all coronavirus have a very similar genome structure and the proteins they encode are very similar for the most part. But subtle changes in a protein can make really dramatic differences in how the virus behaves, how it spreads, how it's able.
Susan Weiss:
So, these viruses are very, very good at shutting down host innate immune responses. And so, the cold viruses superficially seem to have less of these proteins that can do that. But we really don't know that. And we really don't know why SARS-2 spreads pre or asymptomatically, whereas MERS and SARS don't do that, except that perhaps we think it may stay in the upper respiratory tract more, but we don't know why. So, it's pretty mysterious.
Art Caplan:
So, I'm going to switch over to Drew here. There's been some allegation that this particular outbreak did not occur, the SARS outbreak that led to COVID from animals, that it was concocted in a laboratory. Some people have promoted the theory, that biological experimentation looking for weapons may have played a key role in why this appeared in China, why it appeared in Wuhan. Drew, what do you say to that? And I will let Susan jump in too.
Drew Weissman:
I mean, it makes little if any sense. I think what people have made conspiracy theories out of a report that said the Wuhan Institute studies coronaviruses. So, they take bats, they isolate coronavirus from the bats. They grow them in cultures, they sequenced them, they examine them. What the original reports was that maybe one of those viruses escaped from the lab and from that conspiracy theorists said "Oh, well, they made the virus." It's essentially impossible to make a virus. So, this virus has a code of 30,000 letters. It's really impossible to make a virus like that, and to teach it to do what COVID-19 is doing. We just don't have the knowledge, technology, ability to do that. So, I think it's conspiracy theories with no truth to it.
Susan Weiss:
I have some strong feelings about that as well. I think as Drew said, there's two different things. One is the possibility that it "escaped" from the lab that it was a natural virus from a bat, and the other that it was manmade. As far as the escape, I think it's really unlikely. And for one thing, many of these bat viruses don't grow very well in the lab and they're not really even viruses, they're just sequences that Dr. Sheehan colleagues in Wuhan have obtained-
Art Caplan:
The genetic material from the virus.
Susan Weiss:
They actually take bat guano, because these viruses are interrogating bats, they're not really respiratory viruses in bats. And they sequence away and they find sequences. Some of them are culturable, I think it's unlikely that "escaped." Before I think that there was someone else that had it escaped, the idea that it had escaped would come out, they wouldn't be able to keep that contained. So, I really doubt that it happened. But as far as making the virus, we tried in our lab many years ago to manipulate mouse hepatitis virus, that's an innocuous mouse virus. We tried to sort of make recombinant viruses, manufactured viruses to behave the way we thought they could, and it doesn't work.
Susan Weiss:
The only way for these viruses to become more virulent or more spread is by natural selection, which is what the variants are. So, I just reject the idea that, as Drew said that anybody has the wherewithal or the knowledge to put together. And also we should say in its 30,000 letters, it doesn't resemble any other known viruses. And so, there's no way de novo for someone to figure out how to make a diabolical virus like this. So, it's completely not possible.
Art Caplan:
And aside from impossibility, maybe one or both of you could comment. If you could do and it seems like the most ridiculous biological weapon to invent. It's almost suicidal. Why would you go down that path? It seems to me nonsensical to even speculate that way. I'm seeing some agreement there.
Susan Weiss:
Yeah. You can't control it. It's an atomic bomb.
Art Caplan:
All right. And I'm starting to get questions. I see them, folks. So, keep them coming, I promise to get to those. But I wanted to ask you, we hear that term, one of our favorites in the current research environment, warp speed. So, Susan, you may have found that ironic if you were meeting with 12 people in 1980, waiting for somebody to fund things. And the same with you Drew about trying to get somebody to pay attention to mRNA mechanisms for vaccination.
Art Caplan:
But why were we able to go relatively quickly? For those of you who don't know, usually a vaccine is sort of 6, 7, 8, 10 years in development using older techniques. We seem to have gotten a highly effective one in a very rapid period of time. Did we cut corners on the basic science? Were we really prepped because of MERS and SARS, to just jump on a platform? Drew, how did we get there relatively fast?
Drew Weissman:
What people don't understand is that they think RNA vaccines are brand new, they were just invented and developed. That's not true. People have been working on RNA vaccines since early '90s. When we made our observation in 2005, we started working on this vaccine platform. Similar vaccines have been in clinical trials, they've been in people for over five years. So, this is not a brand new vaccine.
Drew Weissman:
The reason why everything occurred so quickly, is that all of the pharmaceutical companies, all the basic science researchers got together and said, "We have to make something quickly." And the FDA, and the MSA, and other regulators joined in. So, the big difference between making new parvovirus vaccine that takes five to 10 years is that for the RNA vaccine, the basic science was done. We knew how to make the vaccine, we knew the spike protein was the critical protein to include. So, RNA can be made very quickly-
Art Caplan:
And let me interrupt you there Drew. You knew the spike protein was critical, because that would get the reaction in the host to natural infectivity. Is that what you're saying?
Drew Weissman:
Vaccines for SARS and MERS, 20 years ago used spike. Susan describes spike as the binding infusion molecule. So, that makes it the target of a vaccine.
Susan Weiss:
Can I also interrupt. The really the only protein on the surface of the virus particles, so it's the one that the antibodies will see.
Art Caplan:
An attack.
Susan Weiss:
Yeah.
Art Caplan:
Okay. Sorry, Drew.
Susan Weiss:
Sorry.
Drew Weissman:
So, RNA is also very fast. So, when you want to make an influenza vaccine, you have to identify the virus, you have to grow it. You have to figure out how to grow it in eggs, you have to make sure it doesn't change, you have to inactivate it, you have to formulate it. All of that's a very long process. Even though we've been doing flu vaccines year after year, it still takes six months, just to do that.
Drew Weissman:
With RNA, you only need the sequence. So, on January 12, when the Chinese released the sequence, we, Moderna, BioNTech and many other companies took that sequence and made RNA vaccines. Moderna, injected people 66 days after the sequence was released. But the RNA platform made it very easy to quickly make the vaccine. Now the other reason it was done so quickly is that with most vaccines, you do a phase one trial. You look at the results, you discuss it with your funders, you wait a year-
Art Caplan:
First in human?
Drew Weissman:
Yeah. Then you do the second phase, you discuss the results, it sits for a year. And then you do a third phase, which often takes a couple of years. With COVID-19-
Art Caplan:
And that's the big randomized trial that we hear about with 20...
Drew Weissman:
Yeah. 30,000 plus people. With COVID, everything was done at the same time. So, the platform was established. The phase one, phase two, phase three, were all run on top of each other because, the incidence of the virus or the number of people getting infected was so high, we could get a readout to the phase three trial, which is efficacy, how much protection do you get in two months versus two years or longer.
Drew Weissman:
So, all of that allowed the vaccine to be made very quickly. No corners were cut, no toxicity studies, no adverse events were ignored. It was done because the pharmaceutical companies, the government, academics got together and said, this is emergency, we need to do something fast.
Art Caplan:
Susan, you want to comment on the warp speed that makes many people nervous. I feel much better listening to Drew's account of being prepped, and ready and also being able to move quickly to roll the vaccine out.
Susan Weiss:
I don't have much to add. Drew, gave a pretty careful discussion. Just to say that everything leading up to understanding that spike was the important protein, we knew that for a very, very long time.
Art Caplan:
Drew, let me give you a follow up question here. It's actually one that's in the Q&A, too. Why do we hear about the storage issues with Pfizer or Moderna as opposed to different template vaccines like Janssen? Why is it necessary to have all this refrigeration and special handling?
Drew Weissman:
That's mostly a developmental issue. When a drug company, pharmaceutical make a new drug, or a new vaccine, they discussed with the FDA, how they're going to test storage. That was never done before because nobody thought of making a drug in a year to treat a new pandemic. When the COVID hit the lipid nanoparticles are fat droplets. And what that means is that water freezes at 0 centigrade, 32 Fahrenheit. Fat freezes around negative 40, negative 50 centigrade.
Drew Weissman:
And the idea was that you've got a fat droplet with RNA inside, you have to freeze the fat so that it maintains its shape and properties. And that was the given for lipid nanoparticles for 15 years. It wasn't until COVID hit that we suddenly had the problem of how do we store it. So drug companies are now figuring out ways of storing it in regular freezers, and in refrigerator temperatures. And all of that's going to be coming out over the next months. So, basically in the beginning, they thought you had a freeze the fat, which left you with minus 80. And now we're figuring out how to get around that.
Art Caplan:
Promising there because that would make a lot more distribution possible with those vaccines, which seemed to be a strong template, especially if you're moving toward a universal vaccine, that would be a great tool. Susan, a lot I don't understand, but one thing I don't understand is, why are these mutations and strains occurring so rapidly with this particular virus? I think of a lot of things that are out there, and they don't seem to mutate as fast, and become strains that are bubbling up, and threatening to go worldwide. What's with this virus anyway?
Susan Weiss:
I don't think it's anything with the actual genetics or the sequence of this virus. All coronaviruses, as they replicate, make little so called mistakes from mutations, every time they replicate their genome RNA, it's a little bit different. I mean, it's like a swarm of related RNAs. And so, I think the reason why it seems like this is happening so much more is because it's replicating so much more, it's infecting more people. So, the more a virus replicates, the more opportunity it has to make... It makes all these mistakes, so to speak.
Susan Weiss:
And it's really only the viruses. Some of these mistakes, they may inactivate, the virus, so those are going to not propagate. Then there are some that are kind of neutral, they don't really help or hurt the replication or the spread. And then some mutations are going to be selected for because they may enhance the spread. So, it seems like a lot of these variants are enhanced, or at least it seems like they're enhancing the spread of the virus. And so, really again, to me, its natural selection of viruses.
Susan Weiss:
Some of them seem to affect the efficacy if they happen to fall in areas of the spike that are really important for neutralization, or for vaccine efficacy, those kind of mutations are going to make it more difficult to neutralize the virus. But I don't think that's the reason they arise, they arise because there's somehow enhancing the success of the virus. And the success of the virus means that it's going to spread among people more rapidly. As I said earlier, I think it's still adapting from bats to whatever species to humans.
Art Caplan:
Just follow up. Given that the viruses throw up their mutation somewhat out of error. They just do what they do and if they get a lucky combo, they spread more. Why is it that younger people don't seem to get infected in the same way that older people do? What's going on there? Is it something inherent in the immune system of 12 year olds or? Why do we see those disparities?
Susan Weiss:
You don't mean, why do they get infected, but why they don't get sick.
Art Caplan:
Excuse me, why they don't get sick?
Susan Weiss:
Drew might know more about this than I do. But I mean, certainly their immune systems may be more robust than older people. Some viruses make young people sicker, for example, in mouse models, the younger mice get sicker than the older mice sometimes. So, I don't really know the reason for that. Maybe Drew can...
Art Caplan:
Drew, any speculation on that?
Drew Weissman:
Most viruses have activities like this. Influenza affects and infects everybody. But it's the elderly who do worse with infection. A lot of it is, as we get older, our immune system isn't quite as good. As we get older, we develop other complicating medical conditions, our lungs don't work as good, our immune systems don't work as well. So, it's probably similar with COVID-19, that the older you are, the more medical conditions you have, the higher risk you've got of doing poorly.
Art Caplan:
Let me ask you. There's a couple of questions coming in, that are related to vaccine efficacy here and one is, there's a lot of concern about the durability of all of these vaccines, the mRNA based ones too, in terms of thinking about how long they'll last. Are we going to need boosters? A lot of questions are here about what your view is about whether we're going to see annual vaccination. Do we have any idea how well the immune system is, if you will, triggered and powerful what the impact might be long-lasting wise? And that's for Drew, first.
Drew Weissman:
So, there's a lot to discuss there. Number one on the list. So, I spend a lot of my time on vaccine equity. I've been working with Thailand for almost a year, making a vaccine for Thailand, in a GMP production site in Thailand. Their fear was that it would be years before they ever saw any vaccine, and they weren't willing to wait. So, they wanted their own site of production for mRNA vaccines.
Drew Weissman:
I'm doing similar in Africa right now in both South Africa and Rwanda, working on developing GMP centers that can make vaccine. Why that's critical is that until we get this pandemic under control, variants are going to keep appearing. Now, the durability of a vaccine for a new vaccine that hasn't been in people for long-
Art Caplan:
Drew, can I interrupt you one second, because I want to make sure people understand why it is that if we don't get things under control worldwide, we're still at risk, because that becomes part of the should we share vaccine with other nations more quickly. So, what is it leaving India to stew or Brazil, to stew along? Does that just create conditions for more mutations? Why are we more...
Drew Weissman:
Exactly, and we're a mobile world. So, the UK variant has now spread throughout the world, the Brazilian, the South African, many variants of rapidly spread throughout the world. So, you can treat half of the world, the other half is going to still make variants if the virus is growing. It's not until you stop the virus from growing, or you reduce that a great deal. And the fewer people infected, the fewer variants that can be produced. So, the question of vaccine durability is an unknown with the RNA-LNP vaccines. And the problem is that some of that is dictated by the pathogen.
Drew Weissman:
So, the spike protein vaccine might act differently than an influenza RNA vaccine. What we're learning by following people that have been vaccinated is that they'll likely need a booster to maintain high levels of protection a year, maybe 18 months later. For influenza, we get a booster every year. But that's because the virus rapidly changes. So, there's two things to think about with yearly boosters. If we vaccinated the world and got this virus under control, we wouldn't need it. So, it's going to be up until the point that we do that, that will likely need a booster. Now, whether we need a booster for variance is also likely but we don't know.
Drew Weissman:
I agree with Susan, the variance that we're seeing up until now are fitness. That means the virus is learning how to grow better than humans. At some point in time, variants are going to appear that avoid immune responses from either infection or vaccination. That's what happens in influenza every year, that's what happens with common cold coronaviruses. So, it's going to happen. As long as the virus keeps replicating, those kind of variants are going to appear, they're going to be more difficult to deal with because they're being made to avoid vaccine effectiveness. So for that, we're going to need new variants, new vaccines, a PAM coronavirus vaccine to get that under better control.
Susan Weiss:
I can just add one thing. I think that it's not so much that the UK variance spreads across the world, it's that similar variants pop-up all over the place because they're under the same kind of selection for replication in humans. So, I know that in Philly that some of the variants, they're kind of permutations of the same variants that you see in UK and South Africa. So, maybe at some point, we can come to some kind of consensus, spike for a booster wouldn't be like against a specific variant, but against a bunch of mutations, so to speak in the spike protein. I don't know, Drew agrees with that, but something like that.
Drew Weissman:
We're working on that right now, the problem is there's 1000s of mutations in the two main regions of spike that antibodies protect against.
Susan Weiss:
But I think it's because-
Art Caplan:
Drew is it realistic to say that we could get ahead of the mutating strains?
Drew Weissman:
I think the way to do it is, through a PAM Coronavirus vaccine. Because what those vaccines do... Spike can mutate but it's limited. There're certain regions where mutations are not tolerated. Those regions can be viewed as conserved sites. So, if you can make a vaccine that makes responses against conserved sites, in COVID-19, SARS, MERS, and bat coronaviruses, that will protect against variants of all of those viruses as well.
Susan Weiss:
But I also think it's important to note, and maybe Drew will correct me. That if a vaccine is not completely successful against a variant, there's still some immunity. It's not like a naive person that's completely unimmunized. So, I don't think it's a black and white kind of situations.
Art Caplan:
You might be made less sick or?
Susan Weiss:
Yeah. From what I understand people that have been vaccinated and then get infected are in general getting very sick. And I think it'd be really interesting to know whether these reinfected people have variants, most of the time, maybe Drew, knows as opposed to.
Art Caplan:
So, let me just capture that question Drew. There are people not many, who seem to be reinfected post-vaccination, are they sick? What's going on there? New strains we don't know?
Drew Weissman:
There's been a lot of studies in South Africa and in other regions. There's one region of the world where 70% of the people got infected last September, October, they recovered, they did fine. In December, those same people and more got infected with a variant. So, what it tells us is that variants can avoid immune responses. They may not be able to completely avoid them, but they can. So, that's a concern. And the same thing is seen in South Africa, people that were infected with the original virus can get reinfected with the South African variant.
Susan Weiss:
But one of the thing's I've been wondering, I hear about people in Philadelphia, for example, getting reinfected. Are they getting reinfected most of the time with variants? Or can you still get reinfected but not very sick from the same, so called wild-type virus?
Drew Weissman:
Yeah. So, it's probably both. We've looked at large groups of people that got COVID-19 infection. And what we see is that 90 to 95% of them have good levels of neutralizing antibodies, that should be able to protect them. But a small percent don't have high levels of antibodies. And our guess is that those people don't have protection, and are the ones that are likely to get infected again. Throw in a variant that is even better at avoiding immune responses, they're more likely to infect.
Art Caplan:
So, I have two questions that I'm going to pose to you. And they're not really about your particular science expertise, but it's sort of asking a science expert about their choices in the midst of this pandemic. So, one question, Susan is, do you think if you've been vaccinated, and this applies to you and then same for Drew, that you don't need to worry now about going about your regular life?
Art Caplan:
Would you be throwing your mask away, climbing on airplanes, showing up at bars? Government messaging, some people are questioning here and saying they're not sure. The CDC says you can wander around outside if you're vaccinated, but maybe you shouldn't do that as much if you're in a small group inside. How do you live your lives knowing what you know? So Susan, I'll let you take that.
Susan Weiss:
Since, last June I've been back at work with a mask being very careful. Trying to stay distance although, now we're not quite as distance at works. So, by now, I've been vaccinated since January. I feel safer, I still wear a mask whenever I'm inside for sure. Outside when I'm out on my bicycle, I have it down in my chin in case I come close to someone. So, I've been sort of moderating. We're actually going on an airplane tomorrow for a short trip, but I'm going to take my mask. And I have the shield also that we're supposed to wear in the lab if we have people to close together. So, I guess, I'm not quite as careful as I was in the beginning. And I don't feel terribly threatened right now.
Art Caplan:
Drew, what about you and your personal life?
Drew Weissman:
So, I look at this as really two elements, self and society. So, for self, vaccination is very protective, but it's not 100%. The latest numbers are 94 elderly people, a little over 90%. Which means even if you're vaccinated, you can still get infected. What we don't know yet and what's going to be important to learn is, if you've been vaccinated, you get infected, can you spread the virus? And we don't know the answer to that yet. The other thing is society.
Drew Weissman:
And for me, society is the important element to all of this. So, I would wear a mask, even if the CDC told me not to the show the world that masks protect, and we need to wear that. The there's been multiple state governments who got rid of mask mandates months ago, their infections, their deaths all went up. That clearly tells us that mask protective. So, we need to protect our society. And for that wearing mass, keeping socially distant, all of those things to me are very important.
Art Caplan:
By the way, just as a kind of longer-term issue. Mask seem to be protective, I think, against flu, other respiratory viruses, those seem to be cold. So, there seem to be less of those right now. Should we start thinking about wearing masks anyway?
Drew Weissman:
That's a great point. I'm also a clinician at Penn, so everybody who comes into Penn with a cold, with a cough gets a respiratory virus panel that measures influenza, all the cold viruses. I don't think I've seen a single influenza positive patient the entire winter. That's never happened before. So, the masks have stopped influenza.
Drew Weissman:
If you look at many countries in the Far East, China, Japan, Vietnam, people have been wearing masks for years. It's part of their culture. So, the idea of always wearing the mask isn't a brand new thing that COVID-19 has invented. I don't think America will get to that point, but I suspect a population of Americans will.
Art Caplan:
Susan, would you mask into the future?
Susan Weiss:
I think it sounds rather unpleasant personally to be wearing masks all the time. What will happen if we mask for a year and then we unmask next year? Are we going to get a lot of new infections?
Art Caplan:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Susan Weiss:
I don't know.
Art Caplan:
Well, that'll be an interesting consequence. So, I'm going to ask both of you, again, many people are asking me here, what if you're immunosuppressed, what if you can't... Well, what if you're immunosuppressed? Susan does science have to offer to those people who I imagine are thinking vaccines or the current ones won't help me either because I have a disease or I'm under treatment of some kind. I What do we do there?
Susan Weiss:
I think Drew is going to be better answer, what's happens to the immunosuppressed people when vaccinated? I don't know.
Drew Weissman:
We're studying those people. There are a lot of people that we don't have the answer to yet. We now know Pfizer vaccine is good for 12. It's being tested for six months and older. Pregnant women, breastfeeding women, we don't know the answers yet. Immunosuppression is the most difficult thing to study. And that's because immunosuppression isn't a black or white thing. People have different levels of immunosuppression.
Drew Weissman:
So, there are people with all sorts of colitis that are on low levels of eculizumab, there are cancer patients who are receiving CD19-CARs that wipe out all of the antibody producing cells. So, it's a huge range. And those groups are being studied right now. What I tell patients is that you need to take the vaccine, whether you're immunosuppressed, whether you've got an immune deficiency, it doesn't matter, because it will help a little. It may help more, we just don't know yet. And until we know that I tell everybody get vaccinated.
Art Caplan:
Related one. Again, more to you Drew Some countries in some situations are creating follow up vaccinations being delayed, or in some cases, some countries are thinking we've got to move fast to get an initial response when we only have two shot vaccines. To take the first shot, and then just go with that, and not even try for second shots. Other countries are trying to space out the shots more than if you will, submitted in the data. What's your view about those efforts to get more protection out of a limited supply?
Drew Weissman:
That's a complicated question that we discuss often. The main issue is that it's off label. And what that means is that we have no data in people whether it will work and what it will do. We know from the RNA vaccines, that there's 80% efficacy after one immunization. We don't know how long that will last. So, the concern is that we might immunize everybody, once they're 80%, that two weeks, there 40% that three months.
Drew Weissman:
We don't have any data so we don't know. What we do know from animal studies, which is where my work has done is that spacing vaccines out farther, usually works better, not worse. But that's animal data, we just don't know in people. So, we can't make that recommendation based on data.
Susan Weiss:
I'll just make one other comment in terms of the virus. So, a person whose sort of partially immunized might be a good setup for escape mutants, because that person gets infected and they have some response to spike or other proteins as well. And so that gives the virus an opportunity to select variants that will avoid the immune response.
Art Caplan:
Explain that to me a little more, just so I understand. So, I get vaccinated, I mount a partial response, the virus is in me. It's still growing, it gets happier, because...
Susan Weiss:
Well, you don't quite have enough immunity to clear the virus out or completely neutralize and get rid of it. So, the virus continues to replicate in the presence of your immune response. And the virus, again, it's going to keep making variants because it does that every person every time it replicates. And you may then be a sort of a vessel for selection of a variant that'll avoid immunity,
Art Caplan:
Sort of one person incubator?
Susan Weiss:
Yeah.
Drew Weissman:
And we've seen this with people who have received a plasma from convalescent patients, and monoclonal antibody therapy. Those antibodies last for many months, but the amount of them drops over that time. So, people have studied those people and they find variants are appearing.
Susan Weiss:
To me that people with those targeted one or two monoclonal antibodies, the more you use, the better I would think. But if you give somebody let's say, one monoclonal, that's a really good setup for selecting of...
Art Caplan:
That just chases a single strain as opposed to broader protection?
Susan Weiss:
Yeah.
Art Caplan:
So, Susan you're kind of paying attention to what's going on over the past year or more, since whatever it is February 2019 here. I'm curious, you see the media, you see the reporting, what pleases you? What bothers you? And I'm going to ask you Drew the same question. So, what has been highly irritating? I'm not talking about the government. I'm asking about communication with the public. Good and bad.
Susan Weiss:
I think the thing that has irritated me the most probably is the way they've handled the variance. Sometimes they're saying, they're more dangerous, or they're more lethal or they're more pathogenic. And I don't think there's any evidence, Drew, might correct me, but I don't think there's any evidence that any of these viruses are actually more lethal once they get into a person. They may spread more. I also think that there's not been enough really scientific comparison of these variants, something that we're interested in doing in our lab. Like, how do they really behave differently.
Susan Weiss:
And so, the media has made them I think, very, very scary. And I agree with Drew, they can be dangerous. We have to vaccinate enough people to make them stop replicating and arising. But I don't think the way that the media has presented them has been particularly helpful. I do think like the New York Times has had really good articles describing what the mRNA vaccines are and drawing very nice images and things like that. So, I think there have been some good explanations about the virus and about the vaccines. But I also think that there's been a lot of over, I don't know, overly scary stuff about variants.
Art Caplan:
So, the variant of the day almost is some of the press coverage.
Susan Weiss:
For example, the UK variant, as I said before, that variant rose in the UK, but similar variants are rising, in Philadelphia, Chicago, wherever in the world. And I think they gave the impression that we close the English Channel that the variants would stay restricted to UK. And that's a ridiculous idea really.
Art Caplan:
Drew, what's bothered and please do about sort of media communications.
Drew Weissman:
I apologize, I have to bring government into this also. But some media has been very good, they've been honest. They tell what's going on. And this is often driven by political persuasion, is writing your absolutely ridiculous stories up into the point where some of the media I've read says that RNA changes our genome and causes cancer, RNA makes you in fertile. So, I think everybody's at fault here. I think some of the media is just warped at one end or the other and is not telling the truth.
Drew Weissman:
To me telling the truth is the critical component. I've been friends with Tony Fauci for many years. And he tried his best to tell the truth during the prior administration, and got shut down because of it. And I think that can't happen, we can't silence scientists. We can't take scientists out of the conversation when we're discussing a pandemic. And that's what bothered me the most about this pandemic, and then the reporting and everything else.
Art Caplan:
I'm going to put a double question to you. One is a softball, one, maybe less. The softball is heavily underfunded, basic science research in trying to combat both pandemics. I'm not talking about cancer and other things. I'm really looking at the infectious disease space, we can argue about whether we should have a more bigger war on cancer and all that. But I'm just curious about the infectious diseases and the role clearly that you both played, basic science knowledge played in being able to respond to this particular pandemic and some smaller prior ones.
Art Caplan:
That was the softball by the way, that was do you want more money? And then tougher question, intellectual property. So, Drew said he was working with Thailand, there are other countries. India has a big Serum Institute, I know that they have capacity. Does intellectual property and its protection by industry get in the way during a plague of producing more vaccine? I mean, I could add other drugs, but let's stick with vaccines. So Drew, you want more money and then where's the intellectual property?
Drew Weissman:
Yeah. So, I have to answer yes to wanting more money. And if you look at NIH, and NCF and other funding over the years, it goes up and down. And we're mostly down now compared to five or 10 years ago. So, certainly more money is going to help us cure more diseases, understand more basic science. As far as IP, I think what people don't realize is that the reason we're not making more vaccines isn't because of IP problems. It's because we don't have the facilities. We don't have the raw materials to make more vaccines. So, in the future going forward, IP is going to come become important. And that's why I'm working with South Africa, Rwanda, Thailand, to build GMP centers, and to negotiate with the pharmaceutical company-
Art Caplan:
And that would be manufacturing centers?
Drew Weissman:
Manufacturing and development. What people have to understand is that for the HIV epidemic. So, back in the days when triple antiretrovirals first appeared, they were expensive. 1000s of dollars a month. Africa was the principal site of HIV, they couldn't afford the drugs. So, what the African countries, the WHO and other organizations did is they went to the pharmaceutical companies and said, "We need you to lower the price for these drugs."
Drew Weissman:
And when they said no. They said, "Well we're going to..." There are ways during an epidemic that you can avoid, get around patent protections. They simply said, "Well, we're going to do a compulsory license and make them ourselves." And suddenly, the pharmaceutical companies lowered the price to $100 a year, and everybody got drugs. So, the pharmaceutical companies want to increase production. They can't right now, in the future, that's when the negotiations start about how closely are you going to protect your IP, versus allowing the world to be vaccinated.
Art Caplan:
Susan, do you use any more money?
Susan Weiss:
Yeah. I definitely have some comments about that. So, there's a lot of people saying, "Yeah, we should support basic science." But it doesn't usually happen that easily. In fact, I just want to talk about one, after the SARS epidemic in 2002, 2003, there was a bunch of money put out by NIH for what they called Regional Centers of Excellence. And this was money given out specifically for what they call, emerging pathogens, SARS, and Ebola and lots of like that. But what was really ironic to me was at that time, those centers were not able to fund things like model viruses, like mouse hepatitis virus. And so like I said, I'm a really basic scientist. And if we go really far back, that's where the first spike was identified. That's where the first receptor was identified.
Susan Weiss:
And so to kind of cut off what I'm calling really basic science with model organisms is something that's really not been funded enough. And I think that's really a shortcoming of the system. You can call basic science, all different levels of basic science. I mean, even more basic is, how does mRNA work even? But to really cut off, studying things like model organisms is a real mistake, I think. People that study plant viruses, for example, have had a really hard time getting funded by NIH, because it doesn't seem that applicable to human health, but it is applicable to human health in a very abstract, long-term kind of way.
Art Caplan:
Yeah. I would think eating is a good thing for human health. Appreciate that. So, let me ask a sort of another related question to this issue about access to vaccines. And this is a pet issue of mine, been interested in it. There are some folks doing Do-It-Yourself Vaccines. George Church, some of us know, George, I've known him a long time. He's been partnering up with some other MIT scientists and others, to kind of homebrew up a nasal vaccine. And we don't have to get into the science of what he thinks he's doing. But I'm just curious, what's your attitude about this kind of Do-It-Yourself movement, generally in the sciences, but in particular, in trying to come up with a vaccine given what we demand in terms of public trust and assurance that things go through the regulatory process? I don't know, Drew, you can take that first.
Drew Weissman:
I think you have to really understand what Do-It-Yourself means. So, Katalin Karikó and I, 15 years ago, had a Do-It-Yourself RNA lab. And we kept at it and now it's a world standard. So, there are 160 or so labs working on vaccines using all different plans. We don't know which of those will be best, we don't know which will be easiest to give. I mean, George's nasal vaccine, that would be an incredible advantage, because instead of having to stick needles in people's arms, they go to a shop in the middle of town or somebody sends them a letter, they inhale whatever is in the letter, and they're vaccinated. So, you Do-It-Yourself, to me is basic science research. It's developing new ways, new technologies, new understandings. And I think it's very important and it should be encouraged.
Art Caplan:
Susan.
Susan Weiss:
I don't really have much to add to that. I mean, it's creativity, it's doing something that outside the box, it's important.
Art Caplan:
I'm a little more skeptical only because I think in the vaccine space, people tend to distrust, and there are a lot of people who are hesitant and dubious. We try to reassure them that no corners are cut, we've got an understanding of what we're doing with the current crop of vaccines that's deeply rooted in good work. I always have this fear and maybe I'm wrong, somebody can correct me one of you, that if they came up with something that was promising, they couldn't roll it out. You still have to put it through all the usual hoops and regulatory hurdles anyway. Not to say they couldn't find something creative, but it's not like they're going to find a creative thing and just present it to the world.
Susan Weiss:
No. It would have to go through the usual, as far as I understand the usual process.
Art Caplan:
What do you make of these vaccines coming out of Russia and China, Drew? A lot of people are... I saw Brazil yesterday said no, no Russian vaccine here. The Russians have actually responded today. I can't quite figure out if China hasn't registry on Sinovac and some of their vaccines. Are they tracking adverse events or problems, I don't know. What's your view, they are about those vaccines and their utility?
Drew Weissman:
Looking at the vaccines in the platforms, they potentially are could be very good vaccines. There are a lot of concerns. So, the first was that, for Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine, they announced the efficacy before they did the phase three clinical trial. The phase three clinical trials determined efficacy.
Art Caplan:
That's the big numbers?
Drew Weissman:
Yeah. That's the 30,000 people. So, that immediately alerted everybody that not to trust that vaccine. The Chinese vaccines, a number of them had efficacy below 50% and those were dropped. The biggest problem is trust. Do you trust the people who are making selling, producing and doing the clinical trials? If you trust them, and you accept the data, then I have no trouble with those vaccines. I think they're potentially very useful.
Art Caplan:
Susan, you want to comment there I know that's...
Susan Weiss:
No I don't have anything to add to that, except that the, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with them. The Russian vaccine is similar it's adenovirus vector.
Art Caplan:
Yeah. Sort of the old model. But again, I'm not sure, as Drew, pointed out what they've published in Peer-reviewed places, which leads me to ask both of you. Do you think there's been too much early release of findings about vaccines, antibody therapies, tests? We have this new emerging world of the servers that people send stuff into, I guess you'd might generously describe it as Kwazii peer-reviewed maybe. What's your attitude, should we go more toward the more rapid release of information and let it get kicked around in the science community? What do you think Susa?
Susan Weiss:
Well, not so much for vaccines in particular, but the bio-archives, those are not peer-reviewed at all. You just make a PDF and send in your data, that's all you have to do. So, I have really mixed feelings about that, because it's great to have all the new information immediately available. On the other hand it's not been peer-reviewed, and there's a lot of really not very good science out there. And you have to weed through a lot of stuff to find out what you really believe in what you don't believe. As far as for vaccines, Drew can comment specifically, but I would imagine it's going to be similar.
Drew Weissman:
So, I joke with my lab members and my collaborators, that we're now in a world of science by press release. And but we look at that we say "Yeah, that's nice." That the bio-archives, the Metal Archives, I think it's a reasonable thing to do. It puts the onus on the reader to critically read it and see do they believe this study? Because that's what peer review is. It's scientists reading the article and saying, "Do I believe this, did they do it correctly?" It certainly gives us a lot more to read. So, I'm sleeping a lot less than I used to, but I am not the world's best scientific reviewer. I read the bio-archives and then I wait for it to be published. And I read the published article and take that as more fact than the bio-archives.
Susan Weiss:
But I think it's because there's so much to read, it's kind of problematic. You just can't read everything in bio-archives that... I can't Anyway, I'm not fast enough. There's stuff that gets through peer review that's not that great either but I do think it's one level of screening that does eliminate a lot of the not such great stuff. The beef that I have in general about coronavirus is like previous to this pandemic most of the coronavirus literature is in the Journal of Virology and places like that not in these really high profile journals, like Cell Science.
Susan Weiss:
Now there are many, many coronavirus articles in these very high profile places and a lot of them, in my opinion are really not done very well. And it's a lot of this sensationalist you have a really hot looking result that comes out in these places and they're not always really that well reviewed. So, I'm kind of disappointed in that and I think that a lot of people aren't reading the older literature on coronaviruses because it's not in these very visible places. And I think a lot of reinventing the wheel as far as the basic science goes. So, that's been disappointing to me.
Art Caplan:
Yeah, for those who don't know normally papers are submitted to journals sent out to a couple of peer reviewers, sent out to anonymous peer review sometimes. It's part of the truthfulness that Drew was talking about that we want to try and verify what people say, their methods and so on. Just a quick follow up question either of you, do you think the peer review system is strong enough? Is it broken? Lot of journals out there will publish anything anyway for pay. It's hard sometimes to sort them out if you're a government official. I go to hearings and people are presenting stuff from journals that are pay for publish kind of things, they don't distinguish, they don't understand that. What's your view about what we need to do, use peer review as our litmus test for validity?
Susan Weiss:
I think it's very uneven. Some journals have really good peer review and pretty rigorous, some journals not so much. Sometimes, I would think not find the right reviewers and so, things kind of sneak through. So, I think it's very uneven. I get now asked to review papers almost every day, and some of them are from journals I don't know anything about, and they may be those pay for paper published kind of. So, I don't know it's a really tough problem. But I do see like they said even these really high profile journals, I'm feeling like are not always doing very rigorous reviews when the result sounds hot, which is really sad to me.
Art Caplan:
Someone's asking about a situation that arose just in the past week. A private school in Miami said, "We're not going to let anybody teach here who's been vaccinated because we think they're a threat to spread the disease to teachers." Yes, actually true, I saw this myself. We have this idea that partial immunity might create an incubator. It's a little bit more of a technical point. But Drew, what do you say when you see that kind of position? I mean, what I say, I'll tell you maybe that shouldn't be a school, but that's just me. What do you say about dangerous from vaccination? Let's put it that way.
Drew Weissman:
So, when I initially read that report, what I read the as saying is that the vaccines were doing something that could be transmissible to other people and would be dangerous, which is absolutely crazy. I think that school should be shut down, burned down, thrown away, replace. Because a leader that thinks like that isn't a leader of educating our children. 200 million people have been vaccinated so far, there's been minimal, if any adverse events from the vaccines, that are there in the one in the million category. There's never been a transmission of a vaccine component that caused a problem. That's just crazy. That's taking the worst of the conspiracy theorists and having them lead your school.
Susan Weiss:
I mean, all these newspaper articles explaining vaccines, for example, should show you that it's one piece of RNA that makes one protein, there's nothing that can get into your genome to alter your... I mean, it's crazy. It's really crazy. I agree.
Art Caplan:
I'm going to sort of start wrapping us up, and I wanted to give you each an opportunity. Is there something that you wanted to get across to our alums, and what I must say, is a very admiring audience of you both. So, I'll flatter you a little bit with that. But something I didn't ask, something that Susan, you wanted to make sure people understood or got across same will be coming to Drew after you.
Susan Weiss:
I hadn't really thought about that. I mean, we sort of touched on this, that I think that if you're a young budding scientist, that you should find a topic that you find very engaging and exciting. And even if it doesn't seem like it's very important to the rest of the world, that you should go for it and try to understand it. I think that's really important for young scientists not to go for the hardest thing around but to find something that truly interests you.
Art Caplan:
Drew.
Drew Weissman:
I'm still a basic scientist, I always will be. I think what people have to understand is that RNA isn't just vaccines. And my lab has been working for years on many different therapies with RNA, including gene therapies, protein replacement for congenital disorders, and many other things. And that's basic science, basic science is being able to take an idea, and test it and see if it works. And if it doesn't work, you do something else. And a career in basic science to me is incredibly satisfying.
Drew Weissman:
I did an MD-PhD, I went and did my residency, I was bored stiff of taking care of patients, because it's cookbook medicine. You come in with a high blood pressure, you get put on hydrochlorothiazide and a beta-blocker. There's no creativity, there's no thinking. Now, that's not to say that clinicians are bad. But you have to understand career choices and what you want to do. If you're a creative scientist that wants to investigate, that wants to invent, that wants to understand basic science is a great place to go and I welcome you. And give me a call when you're ready to start lab work.
Art Caplan:
I have to say, part of the reason I left medical school was a little bit of that resistance to cookie cutter. I didn't see some of the creative stuff. On the other hand as Drew was hinting, you don't always want the creative person as your factor when you want to respond to health problems that have ways to fix them or heal them. But I understand the point and I appreciate. I want to say again and wrapping up, I'm going to turn this back to Len and Alyson. Very proud to have you as a fellow Brandeistians. Amazing contribution to battling this pandemic.
Art Caplan:
I'm really excited and find it important to stress that these science interests were early, and met at Brandeis and turned into amazing careers that not only fed your own interest in creative thinking about the world, but contributed enormously to saving that world and battling some of the biggest threats that let's call it the virological and bacterial can present to us, which seems, in some ways to be an ending. So, thank you for all that you've done. I'm very pleased to see these awards going to you both. And with that, I'm going to turn it back to Len or Alyson, whoever wants to jump in.
Len Rosenberg:
Thanks, Art. It's hard to put it any better than that. But I'll certainly echo those sentiments and certainly the congratulations. So, thank you so much to you Drew, Susan, to you our speakers for enlightening fascinating discussion really tremendous. Special thanks though also, to all of our alumni and friends who have joined us today.
Len Rosenberg:
I think looked down at one point and saw well over 100, 125 participants who I'm sure are equally appreciative of your efforts. So, thank you. We are delighted to see all of you coming together to explore topics with our Brandeis faculty and our alumni experts like today. We do look forward to you joining us in spring for our new alumni college virtual series online throughout the month of May and June upcoming.
Len Rosenberg:
Just to note, for programming sake. Next week, we'll have a program on American democracy and the American presidency between Julian Zelizer, of the Class of '91 and Brandeis Professor Leah Rigueur on Tuesday. That's May 4th from 7:00 to 8:30 P.M. Eastern Time. Thanks again, we greatly appreciate your participation and your continued support of Brandeis. Thank you everybody. Thanks to Susan and Drew for your efforts. Be well, take care.