Jim Crowe?
Military programs aiming to end pandemics forever
It might surprise you to learn that many of the innovations deployed to counter the coronavirus were once obscure Pentagon-funded projects to defend soldiers from contagious diseases and biological weapons. The life-saving vaccine developed in record time owes a debt to these programs. To learn more, we met the man who has been leading the rapid vaccine effort, retired Colonel Matt Hepburn. An army infectious disease physician, he spent years with the secretive defense advanced research projects agency or DARPA, working
on technology he hopes will ensure COVID-19 is the last pandemic.
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Bill Whitaker reports on the Pentagon projects that helped combat COVID-19 and may help end pandemics forever.
James Crowe (pictured)
In 2017, Dr. Crowe entered a DARPA grant competition to produce antibody antidotes fast enough to stop a pandemic. Dr. Matt Hepburn described the program at a TED Talk last year.
Dr. Matt Hepburn at Ted Talk: 20,000 doses in 60 days. Basically, we're talking about engineering antibodies that are so effective that you get near-immediate protection once they're administered and you interrupt transmission in those communities. If you can interrupt it then potentially you can head off the Pandemic.
Dr. Crowe's lab delivered an antibody treatment to drugmaker AstraZeneca in a record 25 days. Others funded by the government's pandemic response program also shattered Matt Hepburn's 60-day mark, including biotech company AbCellera, working with Eli Lilly and Regeneron, which was used to treat President Trump.
Dr. James Crowe: This is the new normal. It's gonna be 60 days from here on out.
Well not quite yet - currently, antibodies are grown in a bioreactor like one at this Defense Department Rapid Response Plant in Florida. It'll take three weeks for this to produce 7,500 doses.
Dr. James Crowe: And so– a lot of scientists are trying to figure out, can this be done faster?
Dr. Crowe has successfully tested a faster way: RNA, the genetic tool DARPA helped pioneer that was used to make the coronavirus vaccine in record time. In the next outbreak – RNA would allow factories like this to churn out millions of doses a day.
Dr. James Crowe: We would start from– a blood sample from a survivor and be done with all of this and be giving you an injection of the cure within the 60 days.
With their promise of speed, immediate protection, and a cure, Dr. Hepburn says RNA antibodies could stop the next Wuhan-like outbreak cold.
Dr. Matt Hepburn: It's really beyond vaccines, That's our future. That's our next step.
Bill Whitaker: Shoot for the moon.
Dr. Matt Hepburn: Shoot for the moon.
Some Pentagon researchers are shooting higher. With the spread of dangerous new coronavirus variants, the Army's Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad is testing a revolutionary approach to stop them all.
Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad: We're trying to not just make a vaccine for this virus, we're trying to make a vaccine for the whole family of coronaviruses. This is the core of our vaccine. We engineer the spike so that we can attach it to this protein.
If his concept, now in clinical trials, proves successful, Dr. Modjarrad says in five years a single vaccine could defeat all coronaviruses: that means many common colds, the deadly strain causing this pandemic and thousands of others.
Bill Whitaker: Is that at this point– a dream?
Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad: This is not science fiction, this is science fact. We have the tools, we have the technology, to do this all right now.
Bill Whitaker: And you think we can, at some point, inoculate the world against these killer viruses.
Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad: Killer viruses that we haven't seen or even imagined, we'll be protected against.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/last-pandemic-science-military-60-minutes-2021-04-11/