Operation Warp Speed's Moncef Slaoui guided COVID-19 vaccine creation: Deliver a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year? Impossible. Meet Moncef Slaoui.
As
science adviser of Operation Warp Speed, the veteran pharmaceutical
executive helped usher a coronavirus vaccine to the US market in
record time. (...)
Slaoui's name came up repeatedly in the spring, when Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was looking for someone from the private sector to help lead Operation Warp Speed – an unprecedented and audacious effort to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine by year's end.
The scientific community was among the skeptical. The fastest vaccine development on record was for the mumps, and it took four years. There was no way to make a safe, effective vaccine in seven months, many said. Something would have to be compromised.
Slaoui thought he could pull it off.
In many ways, he'd been preparing for the challenge his entire life.
A political activist in his youth, he spent nearly 30 years at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, 27 of them working on a vaccine for malaria. He brought 14 vaccines to market and rose to head research and development for the entire company.
"Vaccines have always been my first love. That's what I like the most,"