Irene Kuhn
Science and Ideas Group How HIV/AIDS gave us COVID-19 vaccines
Today, in the spring of 2022, most of us in the vulnerable 65+ cohort are less afraid of COVID-19 because our triple-vaccinated status comes with the knowledge that we are far less likely to be hospitalized, or to die, if we become infected. Since early in 2020, news of deaths, overwhelmed hospitals, and high levels of contagion had made us do all we could to avoid infection. But then, by the end of that year, multiple vaccines had been designed, developed, manufactured, clinically tested and were being delivered into arms. That is unprecedented, break-neck speed! And yet, not a single step was bypassed – every measure was taken to ensure these vaccines were both safe and effective before they earned Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) status. How did all this happen so amazingly quickly? HIV/AIDS was central to the answer. It may seem odd, as we still do not have vaccines to prevent AIDS. But perhaps it is precisely because an AIDS vaccine is so elusive that the United States had developed, over the past ~25 years, the expertise and experience that made possible the unheard-of speed with which COVID-19 vaccines became available to us. Not even presidential interference was able to derail this train! Virologist Irene Kuhn, PhD, will share this uplifting story with us. Irene Kuhn is a Virologist and Cancer Cell Biologist with a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of California, Davis. Her career spanned academia, 23 years in BioTech Pharma, and 11 years at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL).