The great vaccine ... bake off ... has begun
Why the WHO has tasked a South African startup with trying to replicate Moderna's mRNA COVID vaccine recipe.
Fans of the television series The Great British Bake Off have long marveled at the skill contestants show during the dreaded "technical challenge" — for which they are given a basket with all the ingredients needed to make a highly unusual dish but a set of instructions that are often as vague as, "Bake until ready." Now a team of scientists at a pharmaceutical startup in South Africa is essentially confronting the same type of test — except the stakes are life and death.
The World Health Organization has hired the company, called , as part of a $100 million plan to figure out how to make an mRNA vaccine against COVID that is as close as
