Neal Browning, 46, a software engineer at Microsoft, is not one who is looking for risk. In his home north of Seattle, he maintains a wine collection with hundreds of bottles. He likes to cook for his neighbors, preferably steak in a sous-vide oven.
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But since Monday he’s suddenly been an American hero too: test subject number two in the very first vaccine study in the fight against respiratory disease Covid-19, which is currently putting the world in a state of emergency.
At a health center in Seattle, an employee stuck a needle in his upper arm shortly after 9:00 a.m. on Monday, giving him a few micrograms of a substance called mRNA-1273. This vaccine candidate from the US company Moderna is said to reprogram human cells so that they turn into virus building blocks and produce coronavirus proteins in a controlled manner.
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In this way, an infection with the novel pathogen is to be simulated in the organism so that the immune system can develop protection against the virus – only without the sometimes serious side effects of a real corona infection. A total of 45 subjects will receive this vaccine in the next few weeks. But it will be months before it is certain whether it actually works.
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