11 ms·

The technology was years in the making. DARPA was also involved. “In October 2013, DARPA awarded Moderna up to approximately $25 million to research and develo

The technology was years in the making. DARPA was also involved. “In October 2013, DARPA awarded Moderna up to approximately $25 million to research and develop potential mRNA medicines as a part of DARPA’s Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention and Therapeutics, or ADEPT, program”

spamizbad 6y ago
One of the best $25 million in defense spending ever.
- oblio 6y ago
  The internet? :-)
  - SftwreEngnr 6y ago
    Please.
  - btilly 6y ago
    You are more correct than you probably realize. As http://cis471.blogspot.com/2012/08/seeding-internet-cost-government-1245.html http://cis471.blogspot.com/2012/08/seeding-internet-cost-gov... lays out, the government spent $25 million on ARPAnet, the first packet switched network and the granddaddy of our current Internet. So it was actually the same figure as this grant. (There were followup investments from the government, but the whole thing was around $125 million.)
    - jancsika 6y ago
      So $25 million on a decentralized system to spread the idea not to wear a mask or social distance during a pandemic, and another $25 million on a vaccine.
      - zamfi 6y ago
        You’re being downvoted presumably for snark, which as a lover of snark I can’t support. However, your point is also mislaid: there were plenty of anti-maskers at the time of the 1918 Influenza pandemic. Ignoring or selectively using facts to support the narrative you wish were true did not start with the internet!
        oblio 6y ago
        > Ignoring or selectively using facts to support the narrative you wish were true did not start with the internet! My guess is that those probably predate speech :-D
        freeflight 6y ago
        There even was a whole "Anti-Mask League" in SF [0], with others demanding jail time for "mask slackers" [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci... [1] https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-public-health-campaigns https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-public-health-cam...
        DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
        There was also heavy government censorship of the press during WWI, which suppressed early reports of the pandemic. That should be a cautionary tale to people in the present day who want more centralized control over what people can say online - the censors might not always be on your side.
      - Darmody 6y ago
        Is that the only thing you get from the internet? I'd say that more like a small price to pay in order to have something really great.
  - scottlocklin 6y ago
    The jury is still out on that one.
    - domador 6y ago
      The Internet: Yes! Social media: Debatable.
    - oblio 6y ago
      The internet? I think we can all agree that the wheel and writing were some of mankind's greatest inventions. Yet I can use writing to send a letter to someone so that they try to hurt you with a breaking wheel, if you get what I mean ;-)
  - carabiner 6y ago
    The internet was a mistake.
    - themaninthedark 6y ago
      >Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. The internet is great, how we use it may not be. I don't have twitter, rarely delve into comment on most news sites and Youtube. Browse and sometime comment on Reddit and here. I prefer here, less shouty. When you are able to talk to thousands or millions of people without having to have connections, its a wonderful thing. The friction arises from a number of things; contrarians who love to argue, trolls, governments/companies who are trying to influence opinion but also people who have a genuine different opinion and are unwilling to listen to the other side. I did enjoy the internet more when it was younger but at the same time, there was a less diverse population on it then.
DalasNoin 6y ago
But it is very interesting that mRNA vaccines can be very quickly developed for new viruses. The underlying technology may have taken years, but it can be applied to new viruses as soon as the virus is sequenced.
- kemiller2002 6y ago
  I think this is the silver lining for this pandemic. Covid-19 is lethal, I'm not discounting that, but in terms of real lethality, this was a good test run to show that this approach works. (At least in my lay person's knowledge.) What really scares me are the highly lethal flu strains (I think H5N5?) The fact that we can produce a vaccine this quickly now gives me hope when we encounter a scenario like out of the movie Contagion.
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    High lethality is often associated with reduced transmissibility. Which makes sense - dead people certainly aren't going to cough on you. In a Sci Fi movie maybe the virus has a long delay, you're infectious for a month with no symptoms, then drop dead in seconds. But in the real world that's less likely the more extreme it gets. One thing that did make this virus more dangerous was that many humans became infectious significantly before they realised they had symptoms. With some viruses you get symptoms, then (sometimes as a result of the symptoms) you become infectious, making it easier for public health messages to be effective. "Stay at home if you have symptoms" is extremely effective if people aren't vectors until 12-24 hours after the symptoms are obvious, but almost useless if they're infectious a week earlier. I'd argue that countries which think the lesson is "We developed a vaccine quickly, good job" are mistaken. The lesson was just, "Elimination strategy works" and the many countries that didn't even attempt that got lucky they weren't decimated for their incompetence.
    - fat-chunk 6y ago
      It makes me wonder how the world would cope today with a Bubonic Plague or Spanish Flu, those two I reckon would probably be more similar to your hypothetical Sci-Fi disease.
redis_mlc 6y ago
"The first identified case [of MERS] occurred in June 2012 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, ..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndro... Shame a vaccine wasn't made for SARS-1 in 2002.
megaman821 6y ago
Sure, and that website I made in 24 hours was only possible because of DARPA's funding of the first Internet and decades of efforts into programming languages, etc. The point being, if a novel deadly virus was discovered tomorrow, how fast could Moderna develop a potential vaccine?
- iskander 6y ago
  It depends complete on what kind of virus it is. All of the interesting research required to hit "print" on mRNA-1273 was already done in MERS. It would have been surprising if the vaccine didn't work. If a new pandemic emerges from a less well understood family of viruses for which we don't have any good preclinical vaccines, it could still take decades. Sticking the genome into synthetic mRNA isn't the rate limiting step, it's knowing to target the spike protein, inserting the stabilizing proline mutations, &c and also having experience getting safe and protective responses from a similar vaccine for a related virus.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    Not to mention politics, if the disease wasn’t as big as COVID they’d have to wait for years for approval.
stainforth 6y ago
We should always remind ourselves that government is the best investor of first resort.

spamizbad 6y ago

One of the best $25 million in defense spending ever.

oblio 6y ago
The internet? :-)
- SftwreEngnr 6y ago
  Please.
- btilly 6y ago
  You are more correct than you probably realize. As http://cis471.blogspot.com/2012/08/seeding-internet-cost-government-1245.html http://cis471.blogspot.com/2012/08/seeding-internet-cost-gov... lays out, the government spent $25 million on ARPAnet, the first packet switched network and the granddaddy of our current Internet. So it was actually the same figure as this grant. (There were followup investments from the government, but the whole thing was around $125 million.)
  - jancsika 6y ago
    So $25 million on a decentralized system to spread the idea not to wear a mask or social distance during a pandemic, and another $25 million on a vaccine.
    - zamfi 6y ago
      You’re being downvoted presumably for snark, which as a lover of snark I can’t support. However, your point is also mislaid: there were plenty of anti-maskers at the time of the 1918 Influenza pandemic. Ignoring or selectively using facts to support the narrative you wish were true did not start with the internet!
      - oblio 6y ago
        > Ignoring or selectively using facts to support the narrative you wish were true did not start with the internet! My guess is that those probably predate speech :-D
      - freeflight 6y ago
        There even was a whole "Anti-Mask League" in SF [0], with others demanding jail time for "mask slackers" [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci... [1] https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-public-health-campaigns https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-public-health-cam...
      - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
        There was also heavy government censorship of the press during WWI, which suppressed early reports of the pandemic. That should be a cautionary tale to people in the present day who want more centralized control over what people can say online - the censors might not always be on your side.
    - Darmody 6y ago
      Is that the only thing you get from the internet? I'd say that more like a small price to pay in order to have something really great.
- scottlocklin 6y ago
  The jury is still out on that one.
  - domador 6y ago
    The Internet: Yes! Social media: Debatable.
  - oblio 6y ago
    The internet? I think we can all agree that the wheel and writing were some of mankind's greatest inventions. Yet I can use writing to send a letter to someone so that they try to hurt you with a breaking wheel, if you get what I mean ;-)
- carabiner 6y ago
  The internet was a mistake.
  - themaninthedark 6y ago
    >Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. The internet is great, how we use it may not be. I don't have twitter, rarely delve into comment on most news sites and Youtube. Browse and sometime comment on Reddit and here. I prefer here, less shouty. When you are able to talk to thousands or millions of people without having to have connections, its a wonderful thing. The friction arises from a number of things; contrarians who love to argue, trolls, governments/companies who are trying to influence opinion but also people who have a genuine different opinion and are unwilling to listen to the other side. I did enjoy the internet more when it was younger but at the same time, there was a less diverse population on it then.

DalasNoin 6y ago

But it is very interesting that mRNA vaccines can be very quickly developed for new viruses. The underlying technology may have taken years, but it can be applied to new viruses as soon as the virus is sequenced.

kemiller2002 6y ago
I think this is the silver lining for this pandemic. Covid-19 is lethal, I'm not discounting that, but in terms of real lethality, this was a good test run to show that this approach works. (At least in my lay person's knowledge.) What really scares me are the highly lethal flu strains (I think H5N5?) The fact that we can produce a vaccine this quickly now gives me hope when we encounter a scenario like out of the movie Contagion.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  High lethality is often associated with reduced transmissibility. Which makes sense - dead people certainly aren't going to cough on you. In a Sci Fi movie maybe the virus has a long delay, you're infectious for a month with no symptoms, then drop dead in seconds. But in the real world that's less likely the more extreme it gets. One thing that did make this virus more dangerous was that many humans became infectious significantly before they realised they had symptoms. With some viruses you get symptoms, then (sometimes as a result of the symptoms) you become infectious, making it easier for public health messages to be effective. "Stay at home if you have symptoms" is extremely effective if people aren't vectors until 12-24 hours after the symptoms are obvious, but almost useless if they're infectious a week earlier. I'd argue that countries which think the lesson is "We developed a vaccine quickly, good job" are mistaken. The lesson was just, "Elimination strategy works" and the many countries that didn't even attempt that got lucky they weren't decimated for their incompetence.
  - fat-chunk 6y ago
    It makes me wonder how the world would cope today with a Bubonic Plague or Spanish Flu, those two I reckon would probably be more similar to your hypothetical Sci-Fi disease.

redis_mlc 6y ago

"The first identified case [of MERS] occurred in June 2012 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, ..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndro... Shame a vaccine wasn't made for SARS-1 in 2002.

megaman821 6y ago

Sure, and that website I made in 24 hours was only possible because of DARPA's funding of the first Internet and decades of efforts into programming languages, etc. The point being, if a novel deadly virus was discovered tomorrow, how fast could Moderna develop a potential vaccine?

iskander 6y ago
It depends complete on what kind of virus it is. All of the interesting research required to hit "print" on mRNA-1273 was already done in MERS. It would have been surprising if the vaccine didn't work. If a new pandemic emerges from a less well understood family of viruses for which we don't have any good preclinical vaccines, it could still take decades. Sticking the genome into synthetic mRNA isn't the rate limiting step, it's knowing to target the spike protein, inserting the stabilizing proline mutations, &c and also having experience getting safe and protective responses from a similar vaccine for a related virus.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Not to mention politics, if the disease wasn’t as big as COVID they’d have to wait for years for approval.

stainforth 6y ago

We should always remind ourselves that government is the best investor of first resort.