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The new White House science adviser wants to have a vaccine ready to fight the next pandemic in just about 100 days after recognizing a potential viral outbreak. In his first interview after being sworn in Wednesday, Eric Lander painted a rosy near future where a renewed American emphasis on science not only better prepares the world for the next pandemic with plug-and-play vaccines, but also changes how medicine fights disease and treats patients, curbs climate change and further explores space.
Lander is a mathematician and geneticist by training who was part of the human genome mapping project and directed the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard. He said he is particularly focused not so much on this pandemic, but on the lessons learned from this one to prepare for the next one.
“To really make a difference we want to get this done in 100 days. And so a lot of us have been talking about a 100-day target from the recognition from a virus with pandemic potential.”
“It would mean that we would have had a vaccine in early April if that had happened this time, early April of 2020,” Lander said.
Scientists were working on so-called all-purpose ready-to-go platform technologies for vaccines long before the pandemic. They’re considered “plug-and-play.” Instead of using the germ itself to make a vaccine, they use messenger RNA and add the genetic code for the germ. That’s what happened with the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 shots.
Beyond being optimistic about confronting future pandemics, Lander wonders about the implications for preventing cancer. For that matter, the pandemic and tele-health brought the doctor to patients in some ways. Lander said he is reimagining “a world where we rearrange a lot of things” to get more patient-centered health care, including community health workers checking up every few weeks on people about their blood pressure, blood sugar and other chronic problems.
Lander pointed to a drop of about in 90% in solar and energy wind costs, making them now as cheap as fossil fuels that cause climate change. But he said what’s also needed is “an explosion of ideas” to improve battery life and provide carbon-free energy that is not weather-dependent. Those innovations need federal incentives that are part of Biden’s jobs package, he said.