When Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. announced that the effectiveness of its coronavirus vaccine reached 90%, even news about the US election took the second place.
Suddenly, the end of the pandemic may be in sight.
The world is talking about the pharmaceutical giant and its Phase III trials, the results of the final phase of the research. However, people seem to overlook Catherine Jensen, who made an important contribution to this achievement.
According to a report by the Buenos Aires Economic News Network on November 10, although his behavior has always been low-key, the microbiologist born in the former East Germany is actually a well-known figure in the scientific community: now 62 years old Jensen has led the development of two of the world’s best-selling vaccines, human papillomavirus and pneumococcal vaccines. And now, she leads a team of 650 people and successfully completed the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
Mikael Dorsten, head of Pfizer’s R&D department, said that Jensen’s vigorous conduct in R&D also shows that the company is eager to end this frightening pandemic as soon as possible. And she took on the main task of research and development. She calls every day from her home in Manhattan to communicate with the R&D team of Dorsten and the German biotech company (Pfizer’s partner in the development of coronavirus vaccine) to conduct tests on 4 potential vaccine candidates All-round coordination and fierce frontal competition with the vaccine research and development team of Modena in the United States. Although the latter seemed to be progressing faster, it failed to achieve the same results.
According to the report, at present, Jensen is in charge of Pfizer’s vaccine research and development. In addition to the pneumonia vaccine Prevnar and the global attention of coronavirus vaccine, he is also advancing the research of other projects, and these projects are quite challenging. What must be mentioned is the respiratory syncytial virus vaccine, which is currently the main cause of hospitalization in children.
The report also said that when coronavirus began to spread globally in early 2020, all these routine R&D activities were temporarily shelved. Pfizer purchased ribonucleic acid (RNA) technology from the new biotechnology company in an attempt to use genetic material instead of virus fragments to create a new vaccine. Pfizer was very clear at the time that major past projects must be shelved to make way for coronavirus vaccine research and development project. Only in this way can the pandemic continue to spread.
The report pointed out that Jensen personally had a long talk with Uul Shahin, the founder of the new biotechnology company. Shaheen is an oncologist, researcher and entrepreneur, and they all appreciate each other very much. A few months later, as coronavirus spread across the world, Shaheen began to collect epidemiological data: airborne, highly infectious, with a higher mortality rate than influenza, and it is likely to cause a global pandemic. His team first conducted a few experiments, and as soon as it gained, he contacted Jason. With the joint efforts of the two and the R&D team, good news finally came out on November 9.
