After years of failures, several vaccines against RSV could be approved in coming months
Getting to this point has been a long journey, but one that has benefited from game-changing discoveries. Here’s how we got here.In the 1980s, Paul Glezen, a microbiologist and immunologist at Baylor College of Medicine, made the first important discovery toward creating an RSV vaccine. Doctors knew that while nearly every baby became infected with RSV by the time they were two, only a small percentage became sick enough from their infection to be hospitalized.
Graham isolated a version of the protein that the virus made before infecting a cell, and in tests in animals and with human cells, this protein was far more potent in stimulating the immune system than previously isolated RSV proteins. NIAID had partnered with a small biotech in Cambridge, Mass., called Moderna, to test this strategy. Not only did the company place its bets on the genetic code for the same form of the viral protein as Graham, but it also banked on a new way of delivering that information into the body using a genetic material known as mRNA.
Gruber says Pfizer also focused on developing a vaccine for adults at highest risk of RSV—the elderly—and used the same vaccine to also immunize pregnant women as a way to protect newborns. “Some pregnant women could make antibodies to pass on to their infants, so we needed to figure out how to make every pregnant woman have that opportunity,” he says. In March, the company presented to an FDA panel of outside experts its encouraging late-stage results from human testing among older people.
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