Entrevista a María Elena Bottazzi: “Regalamos nuestra vacuna para salvar el mayor número posible de vidas” – Blog

Microbiologist María Elena Bottazzi explains how her team co-led with Peter Hotez developed and shared the technology to develop the Corbevax and Indovac vaccines on a non-profit basis.

To define herself, the microbiologist Maria Elena Bottazzi It starts with his multiculturalism: he was born in Italy and grew up in Honduras, his father’s country. From those days he remembers with nostalgia the rivers in which he bathed and the horses on his grandmother’s cattle farm. You had to guard against intestinal worms and the forgotten tropical diseases that burdened the lives of so many people around you. Thus he began to forge his sensitivity to poverty and inequalities.

He liked to study. Licensed in Microbiology and Clinical Chemistry at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, from which she emerged, she says, “as prepared as anyone who had studied at a high-world university.” He then expanded his training in Florida and Pennsylvania: a PhD in Molecular Immunologytwo postdocs in Cellular and Molecular Biologyand even the beginning of a master in Management.

The meeting with Peter Hotez marked a turning point in his career. They began collaborating in 2001 and, ten years later, moved to Houston, the fourth most populous city in the United States, to found the Vaccine Development Center of the Texas Children’s Hospital. Since then they command a small team of scientists interested in everything that other groups of researchers discard: neglected, emerging or re-emerging diseases. Its purpose is to design, without profit, affordable and huge vaccines for those who need it most.

When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, his laboratory had already been studying coronaviruses for a decade, interested in SARS and MERS, which had stopped receiving attention and had thus become neglected diseases. In three months they developed a technology based on recombinant proteins that gave rise to Corbevaxa COVID-19 vaccine patent free and low costdeveloped in collaboration with the company And biological in India. “A vaccine for the world,” summarizes Bottazzi. Later, they also collaborated with BioFarma in Indonesia to co-develop Indovac.

Associate Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine of the Baylor College of Medicine and professor of Pediatrics, Bottazzi was recently in Barcelona invited by the Malaria and Neglected Parasitic Diseases Program of ISGlobal.

The Division of Pediatric Tropical Medicine at Texas Children’s Hospital promotes research and development of vaccines against neglected diseases. Photo: Baylor College of Medicine.

Nobel nomination

-In the year 2020 You were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize together with Peter Hotez, and that same year Forbes said you were one of the most powerful women in Central America.. How did you change all that?

-The nomination was recognition of our work in seeking solutions for neglected tropical diseases or emerging (COVID-19 was then). But the visibility gained also brought us a responsibility, because now we have our “fifteen minutes of fame” and society is seeing what we do. We have had to improve as communicators, which is not easy.

-What did you feel you did well?

-Anchoring ourselves in the concept of “non-profit”, having remained faithful to the objective of making our work accessible and affordable, a benefit for anyone regardless of their economic capacity. Sometimes you can get confused and see opportunities that move you a little from that center, but you quickly return to your purpose.

-I imagine there are moments of discouragement. What do you do then?

-In science, discouragement is constant: an experiment does not work, a hypothesis is not confirmed, there are not enough funds, something unexpected happens… But we must remember that sometimes those bad moments open doors to opportunities. During the pandemic of COVID-19, for example, when everything stopped suddenly and we could not go near the laboratory without putting ourselves at risk, in the team we became more empathetic with our colleagues.

Patent-free technology for Corbevax and Indovac vaccines

-For you it was an opportunity, because your career changed a little there.

-We worked very hard, almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but Corbevax and Indovac gave us visibility: we were a relatively small laboratory, in Texas, working to benefit the world. The technology we develop is called “the world’s vaccine.” We give it away. We focus on how to save the lives of as many people as possible. The opportunity to do it, and do it with collaborators and groups with whom we shared the same mentality, with vaccine producers, in India and Indonesia, was… I don’t even know how to express what we feel. One hundred million doses of our vaccine were distributed to children aged 12 to 14, that is, to our future. That’s something I think we’ll never forget.

-Were you able to see on the ground how the vaccine was administered?

-At first we kept in touch with our collaborators through Zoom, but later we were able to go see them, yes. It was very nice. When we visited India And biologicalThe first laboratory to adopt our technology, they made us plant a little tree. I have a little tree in India with my name, which will be seen growing and which they will continue to care for in recognition of all the boys and girls that we managed to save. It was a very nice experience.

-Competing with large pharmaceutical companies, did you feel a bit like David versus Goliath?

-Developing any biological medicine, especially vaccines, is an arduous process. We see it now as we return to work on vaccines against neglected diseases: after 25 years of work, we are still just getting started, we have not managed to reach the point we achieved with the COVID-19 vaccine. But we already have a precedent, we know that it is possible! Obviously, it is possible when there are groups that come together with the same objective, and there is the endorsement of governments and leaders, and the necessary funds… and the acceptance of the populations. That is where we have to work a little more: on how to explain to the population the benefit of vaccination. It is forgotten very quickly when terrible infectious diseases against which very effective vaccines have worked disappear.

-Does that have to be done by a scientist? In addition to research, do you have to find funds, explain to the population that vaccines are beneficial, etc.?

-For science to really reach populations, many factors must be considered: social, economic, legal, ethical… It is very important to know how to communicate that science, to explain its value. Universities must emphasize that science must talk with other disciplines.

In search of new vaccines

-Are you working on new vaccines?

-We work on a group of vaccines against intestinal parasites, which cause many diseases, especially in girls and boys. We have quite advanced one against hookworm. We are also working on another one against schistosomiasis, for which we are awaiting results from a study in Uganda. And we are making progress on a vaccine for the disease. Chagasfor patients infected but without clinical symptoms yet. We are waiting for approvals to see if we can start a study in Mexico. In addition, we work with other parasites and bacteria. For example, we have a vaccine project against Lyme disease, a bacteria transmitted by ticks.

The human factor

-In your teams you have introduced a behavioral psychologist.

-Yes, with the idea of ​​improving team interactions, addressing the stress of daily life and making work enjoyable and productive without the person neglecting their family life.

-Do you take care of that balance between work and personal life?

-Yeah. It’s a lot of work. How to add time to reflect and even understand yourself? I am a woman, Latina, I live in the United States and I do not have English as my first language, I have to deal with quite important people and, sometimes, I have a bit of imposter syndrome. I have to think about what my strengths are, and not focus so much on my weaknesses, that my work group can complement each other. I really like practicing rowing in the gym. It is an interesting sport because you put in your own effort, but it is to improve the collective effort. There’s a lot of science behind how exercise helps you forge those team alliances. That’s about the physical plane. And then we must not forget the roots, the family, not lose that human connection.

Tandem with Peter Hotez

-You have been doing tandem with Peter Hotez for 25 years. How is your relationship?

-We have the same passion and the same vision, but if they did a personality study on us, I think we would be almost at the extremes of the spectrum: I do more troubleshootingI solve problems, and he is more visionary and is very good at the social and communication part. I implement, I organize, I am the detailer. Our conversations are constructive, even if we disagree. We learn from each other. And we support each other, in difficult times we remind ourselves that the work we are doing is worth it, and we transmit that to our teams. Peter has always seen me as an equal, even though I was a woman and younger. He has always put me in front and I have also taken the opportunity to stand out. So we move forward together. I don’t think we could have done what we have done separately. I consider myself very lucky, and I think he does too.