Le latest from Wuhan they shiver, but there is also good news. In 2003 it took 20 months to find the first experimental treatment against the newly identified virus: in 2020 it will take 3 months for the first treatments against Wuhan's Coronavirus.
China has already published the genome sequence of the Wuhan Coronavirus and experimental vaccines are expected to undergo human trials by April 2020 for a coronavirus vaccine in record time.
In other words, within the next 90 days a number of potential experimental vaccines will already be available for use against the new coronavirus that is spreading in China and beyond.
It's the fastest timeline the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has ever developed for a vaccine against a new disease.
Chinese scientists identified the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus with impressive speed, and officials made it public within days. On January 24, 2020, the US CDC published the entire genome of the 2019-nCoV virus detected in the first US patient from Seattle, Washington state on GenBank.
CDC developed a real-time reverse polymerase chain reaction test (rRT-PCR). It is able to diagnose 2019-nCoV in respiratory and serum samples from clinical samples.
Coronavirus, in 2003 it took much longer for a vaccine
In the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, it took US scientists as long as 20 months to move from genetic sequencing to the first phase of human testing.
The 2019-nCoV infection caused clusters of severe respiratory illnesses, with intensive care admission and high mortality.
Rapid treatment and mRNA
The US biotechnology company Moderna Inc specializes in ribonucleic acid (RNA)-based vaccines. A chemical messenger that contains instructions for protein production. Moderna is collaborating with the NIH to develop a vaccine against the new coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
The aces in the sleeve of Moderna? A remarkable technological platform. Moderna has created an mRNA technology platform that works much like an operating system on a computer. It is designed in such a way that it can be connected and played interchangeably with different programs. In our case, the “program” or “app” is our drug mRNA – the unique sequence of mRNA that codes for a protein.
In practice, the system can make multiple "attempts" on a vaccine, it can do it in a short time and motivate everything.
If you combine the fully integrated production site and development experience, you can easily understand how these skills are fundamental.
Skills that allowed Moderna to quickly identify and progress a vaccine candidate.
