If you are sick to the core with the money grabbing antics of Big Pharma and their corrupt government toadies (I am), then you’ll probably enjoy a bit of light relief! No, not comedy, just some real caring people, doing real work, in the real world, trying to make a difference, not just get rich at the expense of suffering patients.
It may be a little bit misguided but it seems to me ALL HEART. A couple of women in Brazil, bless ‘em, are trying to replicate COVID mRNA vaccines on the cheap, so that even poor countries can benefit.
[You may recall arch-creep Bill Gates refusing vaccines to poorer countries, because he didn’t get the dollars. It was a “pay me or die” stance. Sums him up to a Satanic-T]
Thing is, I’m not kidding. This heart-warming story broke from NPR (National Public Radio), Sept 9th, 2024. A couple of longtime BFs (best friends, I believe, in social media speak) actually launched an audacious attempt to break the Big Pharma monopoly on vaccines, by creating their own!
Patricia Neves and Ana Paula Ano Bom had been dismayed at Moderna and Pfizer’s unwillingness to share their know-how during the pandemic, leaving people in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil waiting to get the supposedly life-saving vaccines for months after they’d been made widely available in wealthy countries.
So they decided to invent their own version of an mRNA vaccine against COVID, then offer up the patent and the manufacturing process to vaccine makers around the world, essentially for free.
I find very muddled thinking here… As if the Big Boys would just buy the ladies’ patents cheaply and then offer the gift to the world for free. I think a more likely scenario is they would buy up their patents and then put them on the shelf, just to prevent anyone bypassing the extremely lucrative money game. Indeed, I would worry for their safety, that Big Pharma might even just pay a few dollars to have them assassinated; the cost of human life is very cheap in Brazil.
Albert Bourla, the Pfizer chief, might be very tempted, to protect his obscene $50 million “bonus” payout.
Beyond COVID
I’m not saying a support or believe in the COVID mRNA shot. Of course I don’t. This is not a story about fake COVID science. It’s a story or two women taking on the might of Pfizer and Moderna and winning!
The two wonderful, if naïve, ladies planned to target plenty of other viruses beyond COVID. As you know, these vaccines work by inserting a recipe into the body — the mRNA strand — that teaches cells to build a piece of the targeted virus that the body’s immune system gears up to attack. That way when a person is infected with the actual virus, the body is ready for it.
So Neves and Ano Bom’s vision was to essentially build their mRNA COVID vaccine as a plug-and-play system that could be quickly adapted to carry mRNA strands against all sorts of other disease threats as they emerged around the world.
This is not as absurd as it sounds. Neves, an immunologist, originally conceived of the idea because before the pandemic she’d been working with mRNA as part of a project to create a vaccine-like treatment for breast cancer.
Ano Bom is a biochemist who works at the same institution as Neves — the Bio-Manguinhos Fiocruz Foundation, which is Brazil’s premier public agency for vaccine research and development. Ano Bom had already gained expertise working on an encapsulation process for the breast cancer effort.
So they packed some pretty formidable skills.
But best of all, the two women — who have been close since they attended college together two decades ago — share an unusual zest for going after goals even scientists at their own institution initially considered unrealistic.
“Yeah,” said Ano Bom at the time, “We are innovative and — I don’t know — maybe crazy.”
You gotta love those gals!
Patricia Neves (left) and Ana Paula Ano Bom take a break at the institute in Rio de Janeiro where they work. The two scientists say they’ve been inseparable since they met in college. Now their friendship has made it possible to launch a remarkable partnership to make mRNA vaccines accessible to the world.
The Big Problem
The big problem facing their effort (I almost wrote “hairbrained idea”) was to figure out how to devise a tiny fat (lipid) particle to encase the mRNA so that it remains intact once inserted into the body. But, as it happened, Neves had an ideal partner for that challenge in her pal Ano Bom.
In the end, they used an encapsulation process that was entirely their own invention and it worked.
“Our strategy was to escape as much as possible the [existing] patents,” notes Neves. “We designed our elements [to be] different from the ones that Moderna and Pfizer are using.”
Remarkably (I think) the WHO decided to back them. And… presto… in mouse studies the Brazil team’s vaccine has been shown “100% effective” against COVID.
They also cleared another hurdle: setting up a manufacturing facility in Brazil that meets the rigorous safety standards needed to produce vaccine doses at the scale required for the next phase of development. It’s the first facility of its kind in Latin America, says Neves.
Next month the team will begin a final round of safety studies in animals. If all goes well, by the middle of next year they’ll launch clinical trials in people.
Other Diseases
Meanwhile, Brazil’s Ministry of Health has expanded the team’s mission—and funding—to create mRNA vaccines against multiple other diseases.
These pathogens include leishmaniasis, Oropouche (even I had to look that one up!), mPox and RSV—and their candidate mRNA vaccine against RSV is already in animal studies. They’re also researching ways to use the technology they’ve developed in various therapies.
“We started as four people and a dream,” says Neves, referring to herself, Ano Bom, a third colleague who contributed early work and Sotiris Missailidis, the then-head of research and development at their agency. According to Neves, “Missailidis was the person who believed in us since the beginning,” scraping together a few tens of thousands of dollars for the team to launch back when higher ups were dismissing their proposal as essentially ludicrous.
A few $10,000s for research? It makes a joke out of the pharmaceutical industry’s claim they need $billions for research. I mean, why not take a few $100s of millions out of their profits, if they really needed it? They would hardly miss it.
Of course it’s just a lie, to justify their gouging prices.
Awards
The womens’ work has also gained increasing international recognition. Unlike the pharmaceutical companies, Neves and Ano Bom are not working for profit—and that prompted the Argentina-based Ibero American Society of Neonatology (SIBEN) to honor them with a specially created “Altruism Award for the Improvement of World Health.”
But the two also stress that the science that has led to all this has not been easy.
“Oh my God!” says Neves as both she and Ano Bom erupt in laughter, “It’s been hard work. A lot, a lot of hard work!”
“I personally never imagined we would achieve what we achieved,” says Neves. “I still don’t believe it.”
“In the beginning of this journey, we told each other we will never fight over the work.” Not only have they kept that vow, she says, they’ve grown closer — taking turns being the one who gets discouraged and the one who bucks the other up.
“I think our friendship, it will be forever,” says Ana Paula Ano Bom. “We’re casca de bala!” — a Brazilian (Portuguese) expression that literally translates as the candy and the wrapper. They also say their close bond is key to their success in the lab.
I hope you will agree: a wonderful story of humanity and triumph, while Big Pharma continues its mining of human suffering for monetary gain.
Ha!
To Your Good Health,
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor
SOURCE MATERIAL:
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/09/g-s1-20882/best-friends-mrna-vaccine-covid-brazil
