Book Chapter

The Inside Story of Two Young Scientists Who Helped Make Moderna's Covid Vaccine Possible

Scientists Jason Schrum and Kerry Benenato solved crucial challenges in mRNA vaccine development.

Photo credit: LinkedIn

In early 2020, Moderna Inc. was a barely-known biotechnology company with an unproven approach. It wanted to produce messenger RNA molecules to carry instructions into the body, teaching it to ward off disease. Experts doubted the Boston-based company would meet success.

Today, Moderna is a pharmaceutical power thanks to its success developing an effective Covid-19 vaccine. The company is worth $124 billion, more than giants including GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi, and evidence has emerged that Moderna's shots are more protective than those produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and other vaccine makers. Pressure is building on the company to deliver more of its doses to people around the world, especially in poorer countries, and Moderna is working on vaccines against other pathogens, including Zika, influenza and cytomegalovirus.

But Moderna encountered such difficulties over the course of its eleven-year history that some executives worried it wouldn't survive. Two unlikely scientists helped save the company. Their breakthroughs paved the way for Moderna's Covid-19 shots but their work has never been publicized nor have their contributions been properly appreciated.

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Gregory Zuckerman
Gregory Zuckerman is a Special Writer at the Wall Street Journal where he writes about business, economic, and investing topics. He's a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb award, the highest honor in business journalism. Zuckerman regularly appears on such media outlets as CNBC, Fox, MSNBC, and is the author of A Shot to Save the World, The Greatest Trade Ever, The Frackers, and The Man Who Solved the Market.  
Isaac Asimov on the History of Infectious Disease—and How Humanity Learned to Fight Back

Children in Mississippi get vaccinated against polio with the Salk vaccine in 1956.

(Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History)

[EDITOR'S FORWARD: Humanity has always faced existential threats from dangerous microbes, and though this is the first pandemic in our lifetimes, it won't be the last our species will ever face. This newly relevant work by beloved sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov, an excerpt from his 1979 book, A Choice of Catastrophes, establishes that reality in its historical context and makes clear how far we have come since ancient times. But by some measures, we are still in the earliest stages of figuring out how to effectively neutralize such threats. Advancing progress as fast as we can—by leveraging all the insights of modern science—offers our best hope for containing this pandemic and those that will inevitably follow.]

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Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was a legendary American author and biochemist who wrote science fiction and popular science books. He wrote or edited about 500 volumes, of which the most famous are those in the Foundation and Robot series.