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The company was prepared to make available the facility and ask just for the cost of running it. Even if we had one, we would have trouble because we would have to stop manufacturing other vaccines, which are essential for saving people's life." So we thought, "Why don't we take a dedicated facility and have them work on discovering vaccines against known potential outbreak agents, one after the other?" They would become incredibly skilled and trained at going fast, discovering vaccines. The whole concept-after we went through the flu pandemic, the Ebola outbreak, the Zika outbreak-was to say, "Listen, the problem is always the same, which is there are no manufacturing facilities sitting there idle, waiting to be used. Would it have made a difference?Ī: Absolutely. Q: We met 4 years ago to talk about your vision for a pandemic preparedness vaccine manufacturing plant. The interview below has been edited for clarity and brevity. "I feel a joy I am sure every person that has been vaccinated has felt-a form of liberation," Slaoui told Science immediately afterward. "I cannot wait to actually celebrate with all the people that worked together, someplace where we have a great dinner and we just take time to say, ‘great job, everyone.'"Įarlier today, Slaoui received his first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, from Moderna, on whose board he once sat. "Hundreds of people worked 20-hour days for the last 8 months," he says. But he says most of the troubles stem from overwhelmed local public health systems, issues outside of Warp Speed's purview. "What I realized at the very end as I got in trouble with the regime was that, at least as far as I'm concerned, I want to participate in changing the world."ĭeeply proud of what he and the Warp Speed team accomplished, Slaoui is chagrined that Biden has called the vaccine rollout a "dismal failure." He shares the dismay that there have been significant problems administering the vaccine doses Warp Speed has sent to the states-the troubles make him "sad" and "reflective" about what else he could have done.
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The plant is now called GSK's Slaoui Center for Vaccines Research.ĭuring his undergraduate years at the Free University of Brussels, Slaoui was a militant in a secret organization that wanted to spark a revolution in Morocco, his native country. GSK helped form the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations in 2017, a nonprofit that would fund vaccine development, but it, too, ultimately didn't want to bankroll the BPO, and the idea died. government, which has sunk more than $11 billion into Warp Speed vaccine R&D, wasn't interested. The company ended up buying a defunct drug manufacturing plant in Rockville, Maryland, but it wanted financial help to launch the BPO. "So we have to have a longer term commitment and solution that governments and a long-term institution should drive and fund."
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It's going to be catastrophic," he said on a TV show. "Unfortunately, one of these days, one of these agents is going to be global and very lethal.
In 2016, after recent outbreaks of Ebola and Zika had made headlines, he explained why the project was sorely needed. About 6 years ago at GSK, he began working with the company to create a nonprofit division they called a Biopreparedness Organization (BPO) that would exist solely to make vaccines to prevent pandemics.
Never a Trump supporter-he's a Democrat-Slaoui had reluctantly taken the Warp Speed job because, as the former head of vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), he thought he could help solve one of the world's most urgent problems.īut long before COVID-19 surfaced, Slaoui had become frustrated that the vaccine industry had such a haphazard, ad hoc response to emerging infectious diseases.
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In a lengthy chat with Science from his home in Pennsylvania last week, he reflected on his time with Operation Warp Speed, discussing challenging interactions with former President Donald Trump and how to be better prepared for a future pandemic. Slaoui recently resigned from his post, but has agreed to help the Biden transition team into February. The decision puzzled immunologist Moncef Slaoui, scientific head of Warp Speed, but he attributes it to a word he says with disdain: politics. When President Joe Biden took office last week, his administration swiftly announced it would be renaming Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's crash program to develop COVID-19 vaccines. Science' s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.