He is 29 years old, is called Ian Haydon, works as a communications officer in a scientific institute. He is one of the healthy volunteers who received the first dose of Moderna’s “experimental vaccine”. “It’s very strange,” he tells me by Skype one morning in May, in his apartment in Seattle. My blood is precious to me and suddenly it becomes so for thousands of people. His life as a guinea pig began in early March, when his city became the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States. One morning, a colleague emailed him a registration form for the coronavirus trial. He fills it without hesitation. Eleven days later, the phone rings. “Can you come to the clinic? Go to a downtown tower between a Starbucks and a Wework space. A doctor and a nurse examine him. Open your eyes wide. Stick out your tongue. Inhale. Blood test and reading of the consent contract: two injections, one year of medical follow-up and 100 dollars in compensation for each visit – there will be eleven in total. Last thing: he will be one of the first to receive the so-called “high” dose. “I did not have the impression of putting myself on the passage of a train launched at full speed,” he says. He still warns his girlfriend and his parents, you never know.
On April 8, at 9 a.m., a syringe entered his flesh and an unknown liquid called mRNA-1273 flowed through his veins. Everything is fine. For an hour, Ian Haydon stays around, in case of an allergic reaction. At noon, he is allowed to go home, provided with a thermometer. Every evening at 7 p.m., he must note the changes in his state of health in a notebook. During confinement, he comes out even less than before – no time to get sick. Before concluding our conversation, we set a new meeting in several weeks, to take stock. “For the moment, I’m fine,” he breathes. Even if at the moment “going well” remains a relative concept. “
“Hello, Stéphane Bancel, delighted. »On May 15, 2020, it finally appears on my screen. In Boston, it is 7:15 am His days start at dawn and end in the middle of the night. Three to four hours of sleep, a shower and off we go. “There is a good chance that our vaccine will work,” he tells me straight away, in case I still have doubts. No uncertainty in the voice. Chance has no place in his story. “In the history books, he continues, people will talk about the pandemic of 2020 as we talk about the flu of 1918 or the crisis of 1929.” He says he is as ready as possible to face the ordeal. “You have to be humble, but I have prepared Moderna for this moment. His wife presents him with a cup of strawberries for breakfast, “thank you.” When he stumbles on a word in French, he closes his eyes to find the thread, before switching to English. A sign that, from this office where he runs the marathon of his life, France seems far, so far …
Stéphane Bancel grew up in Marseille in the 1970s. His mother is a doctor, his father an engineer. Happy childhood, with sailing trips and weekends in Italy. From a trip to the United States, the grandfather brought back an Apple IIc, first attempt of laptop designed by Steve Jobs in 1984. Young Stéphane coded games “Dungeons and Dragons genre”. He struggles with literary subjects but math and logic offer him a refuge. “I have never been diagnosed but I think I am dyslexic,” he says. Even today, I have to write everything. Even the name of our vaccine, mRNA-1273, I had to repeat 50 times that it was “mRNA-1237”. “
At 20, he joined the prestigious École centrale de Paris. Its difference is already noticed. On the sidelines of the program, he takes genetics courses, learns Japanese, reads Wall Street Journal each morning. When the time comes for the end-of-year internship, he offers himself the guide of French companies in Japan. The BioMérieux group, one of the giants of infectious diagnosis, offers him a job. Direction Tokyo in 1995, a year before the beginning of the epidemic of E. coli, a bacteria that ravages the digestive tract. Thousands of school children in the Osaka region suffer from intestinal bleeding. “Children were dying and we were the only ones who could diagnose the bacteria,” he recalls. It was crazy, we worked sixteen to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. ”
After three years traveling around Asia, he joined Harvard, in order to obtain what is considered the best MBA in the world. “In this universe of serious and refined students, he was a little more serious and a little more refined than the others,” recalls Greg Licholai, a former comrade who went through Moderna. On campus, students dream of changing the world through the Internet, not selling drugs. At 29, he joined the American group Lilly (which notably manufactures Prozac), became responsible for the production strategy and the supply chain, solved industrial problems in Indianapolis, launched drugs in Belgium. We start to talk about him in the inner circle of laboratory bosses. Alain Mérieux invites him to lunch in 2006. He wants to see what this 33-year-old boy has in his stomach.
“We are looking for a new managing director for BioMérieux,” he says.
– But why me ?
– You are the only one with industrial experience. “
Bargain. It’s gone for five years of intense life. You have to manage dozens of labs, factories and teams spread across 42 countries. The delays panic. “All projects take twice as much time and money than expected, reassures Alain Mérieux. It’s biology, you will get used to it. Upon his arrival, Bancel also decided to open an office in Cambridge (Massachusetts), the paradise for biotechnology companies. As he later told the scientific journal Stat News, he was there to play chess, not checkers. Here, on this six kilometer strip of land that runs along the Charles River, neither time nor money seem to obey the rules accepted elsewhere. We find there the cream of investment funds, two of the most beautiful universities on the planet (Harvard and MIT) but also thousands of scientists. Here, above all, research goes hand in hand with business, in a pas de deux where everyone wants to find their interest. In Kendall Square, a former salt marsh that has become “the most innovative square kilometer on the planet”, the distilleries, soap factories and steam boilers have gradually given way to ultra-modern laboratories. “It’s a place where you have to have an open mind,” notes the Derek Lowe. But not to the point that the brain falls from your head. “
Scientists have long watched mRNA with suspicion and fascination. Too unstable, too fragile to survive the journeys of manipulation and injections, this molecule triggers an immune response of the body which tries to get rid of it as if it were a virus or a bacterium. A road leading nowhere. At the turn of the millennium, a Hungarian researcher, Katalin Kariko, however, made a decisive discovery in a Pennsylvania laboratory: by replacing one of the four blocks that make up RNA with a derivative, pseudouridine, it would be possible to suppress the immune response. Kariko files a patent, goes in search of funds, without success. “I was told I was stupid,” she tells me. In 2009, Derrick Rossi, a Harvard Canadian biologist with the false airs of Robert Downey Jr, falls on these works. He synthesizes an mRNA molecule that carries information from luciferase (the protein that allows fireflies to emit light) and injects it into a mouse. A few hours later, he passed the rodent under a bioluminescent signal detector. Unbelievable ! A light appears. “I immediately understood that this technology would be powerful,” he recalls in a voice still amazed. Imagine the number of illnesses we could treat. MRNA makes protein, protein makes life. With mRNA, the patient could produce any protein. The only downside: for the dream to come true, it will take money, lots of money.
Which door to knock on when you think you have the idea of the century? In Cambridge, Robert Langer is sometimes presented as the “Thomas Edison of biotechs”. He has created dozens of start-ups, filed hundreds of patents, worked for anti-cancer patients as well as for hair gel tubes. His name appears in the rankings of the world’s most cited researchers, behind Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud or Pierre Bourdieu. “I felt there was huge potential behind the mRNA,” he recalls. Since the 1970s, scientists have been trying to introduce DNA into a human cell. “He turns to Noubar Afeyan, an old man in the industry, who has spent three decades trying to cross out the word “fiction” from the expression “science fiction”. “I was the one who said to Bob Langer,“ How about we use it to make medicine in the patient’s body? ” He assures me, not a little proud. Kenneth Chien, a Harvard researcher, also wants to be. A team is created. At the end of 2010, Rossi, Langer, Afeyan and Chien launched ModRNA, which became Moderna, for “modified RNA”. Only one leader is missing. But who ? Afeyan has a name in mind, a Frenchie. He goes to letter B from his repertoire.
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