Me, Joe and a spoonful of sugar

Like the astounding victory against polio in 1953, the work will not be over until we can drink the new vaccine from a teaspoon

Monday was a big day in the battle against Covid-19. President-elect Joe Biden got the vaccine, which made headlines around the world. I also got it, which made me very happy.

The breakneck speed at which the vaccine has been produced is a tribute to science and innovative technology. But, like the astounding victory against polio in 1953, the work will not be over until we can drink the new vaccine from a teaspoon – with or without sugar.

I know plenty of skeptics but I am a big fan of technology. The sheer audacity and wonder of a program that produced an effective vaccine against a killer disease in less than a year left me so breathless with admiration that I wanted to be first in line. I also want to be free of the craziness that has warped all our lives in 2020. I think everyone should be vaccinated.

It’s a tribute to Israel’s superb health system that I secured my front-row seat for this pharmaceutical premiere by simply going online. Venture capitalists enjoy taking risks in our daily business, but we are not considered a high-risk group for the virus. I joined thousands of other eligible patients and clicked for an appointment at my nearby clinic. For free.

It’s remarkable that an ordinary Israeli like myself, alongside thousands of healthcare workers and anyone over 60, could get the vaccine on the same day as the US president-elect. Half a million people in the UK have already had their first shot. I hope that many others in many more countries will soon follow.

The warp speed at which the vaccine was developed and distributed is breathtaking. Jonas Salk received a grant to develop a polio vaccine in 1948. It was first tested in 1953 and licensed in 1955.

Moderna, by contrast, finalized the sequence for mRNA-1273 and announced a Phase 1 study on Jan. 13, 2020, just two days after the Chinese authorities shared the genetic sequence of the Covid-19 novel coronavirus.

History will record that that the solution to this global pandemic was produced not by government scientists or corporate giants, but by two biotech startups founded barely a decade earlier. Both Moderna and BioNTech spent 10 years perfecting their groundbreaking research into mRNA platforms, financed by billions of dollars of venture capital and other funding, before going public in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

While Moderna had previously collaborated with the National Institutes of Health on research for a vaccine for MERS-CoV, a different type of coronavirus, BioNTech’s clinical platform was developed for cancer therapy. In 2019, with a $55 million investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, BioNTech began work on HIV and tuberculosis. In a pivot typical of a nimble startup, its leaders realized within days of the first reports from China that it could be a candidate to protect against Covid-19.

The pharmaceutical giants were unable to match the innovative technology of these startups, but stepped in to provide the rapid manufacturing and distribution required to bring the successful vaccine to a global market at massive scale.

BioNTech, founded by a husband and wife team of Turkish immigrant scientists in Germany, also reminds us that brilliant technology knows no borders.

Never in history, where people typically talk about developing a vaccine in 10 years, has an effective treatment been developed so fast, brought to market and rolled out. But even more significant than the speed with which the vaccine was developed, is how much preparation and research went into each of these platforms so they were ready, allowing Moderna and BioNTech to rise to the opportunity created by the crisis.

Without startup innovation and years of platform research, backed by high-risk venture capital, this extraordinary breakthrough would not have occurred.

As Andy Kessler pointedly observes in the Wall St Journal, this vital technology was ready in 2020 because of a demand for innovation that goes back beyond 2010. The key question now is whether we are getting ready for 2030.

It’s a tremendous achievement, but there is still huge work to be done.

Jeffrey Sherman recalls that when he got the polio vaccine as a child in the early 60s, it wasn’t Jonas Salk’s pioneering injection, it was an oral vaccine delivered to children in liquid drops on a sugar cube. Sherman came home and told his father Bob, half of the Sherman Brothers songwriting team who were then hard at work on Disney’s Mary Poppins. The next day, his father and his uncle Dick Sherman wrote “A Spoonful of Sugar.”

The battle against Covid-19 is being won. An oral vaccine could be a vital part of the arsenal. Several companies around the world are working on an oral vaccine, which will be easier to produce, store and distribute – especially if immunity wears off after a year or two, and the virus continues to mutate as now seems to be happening in the UK.

An oral vaccine like the one now being tested by MigVax, one of OurCrowd’s companies, will not require the complex refrigeration needed to store the injected vaccines just released, and is likely to be much cheaper for the billions of people who need it in the world’s poorer countries.

This war will be truly over when we can defeat the deadly enemy with a spoonful of sugar.