What COVID-19 revealed about preventing pandemic influenza

COVID-19 vaccines arrived faster than any before. This success story offers lessons for producing vaccines that could save millions from pandemic influenza.

In early December 2020, Margaret Keenan became the first in the world to receive an approved COVID-19 jab. No previous vaccine had been developed in less than four years, but the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine received by the 91-year-old in Coventry, UK, had reached the clinic in just 11 months. By June 2021, regulators had fully approved 8 COVID-19 vaccines, and no fewer than 92 others were being tested in clinical trials, thanks to seismic mobilization of scientific expertise. In the race to develop those vaccines lies lessons for preventing future global outbreaks—including the inevitable return of pandemic influenza.

“So much of the community responding to COVID is from the influenza research and development space,” says Marissa Malchione, ‎senior associate for Influenza Vaccine Innovation at the Sabin Vaccine Institute. “If we can harness that knowledge and experience, it could really propel progress towards next-generation, broadly cross-protective vaccines for influenza.” The following key lessons, drawn by experts in the field, offer a path forward.

Build on a strong foundation of basic research. Chinese scientists reported the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence in mid-January, and within weeks researchers at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Moderna were able to develop its highly effective vaccine for COVID-19. Vaccine development benefited from knowledge acquired during and after the 2002 SARS outbreak and the 2012 MERS outbreak. “Wherever we had attended to the science, we could leverage it to streamline product development,” says Luciana Borio, vice president of technical staff at In-Q-Tel and former assistant FDA commissioner.

The Moderna mRNA vaccine was repurposed from an mRNA vaccine candidate developed during the 2012 MERS outbreak, and the Pfizer vaccine was repurposed from an adenovirus platform originally developed for Ebola. “mRNA vaccines had been in development for about 30 years, but until recently never had the business case to drive them forward,” says vaccine researcher Kathleen Neuzil, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.