Blumenthal wants more money for COVID-19 vaccine research
NEW HAVEN — U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal made a case at the Yale School of Medicine Friday for more federal investment in vaccine research, while also talking about the importance of clinical trials that reach all communities.
Blumenthal said the $10 billion in the HEROES Act, which has passed the House but has not advanced in the Senate, is needed to add to the research already underway into a vaccine for COVID-19, including efforts at Yale.
“The key to solving our public health crisis, our economic emergency and a lot of our racial justice reckoning is in developing vaccines and therapeutics. Very simply, our nation will not go back to anything like normal . ... We will not have a mechanism to feeling safe and secure without a vaccine,” the senator said.
He said this means a need for more investment in research for many different kinds of vaccines that may be more effective for different sociological groups. The senator said it is exciting that the nation is moving forward with research into as many as 150 possible vaccines right now, with 45 of them in clinical trials and three or more in Phase III trials.
The Rev. Dr. Leroy Perry, the cultural ambassador to the Yale Center for Clinical Investigations, also addressed the news conference on the importance of building trust in communities of color as trials are conducted, to overcome the historical stigma against those efforts.
Blumenthal said the federal government has approved a contract for $2 billion with Pfizer and BioNTech, a German firm, to produce 100 million doses of a vaccine by the end of the year. He said those efforts could benefit from a move to fund current research already underway at Yale.
He pointed to the work of Dr. Richard Bucala, whose team is working on an approach that could help with the rapid production of a vaccine, which would be needed to inoculate as many people as possible.
Bucala is the head of rheumatology, allergy and immunology at the Yale School of Medicine and a professor of medicine, pathology and epidemiology.
“Among current approaches, vaccine antigen delivered by a self-replicating RNA, or replicon, offers the greatest potential for speed of development, safety and scalable production,” Bucala wrote in a synopsis of his proposal in a previous interview.
Nancy Brown, dean of the Yale Medical School, said when university officials were first faced with the growth of the coronavirus, they put together the COVID-19 Response Coordination Team, which included experts from throughout the university, from economists to social scientists, as well as the physicians at Yale New Haven Hospital.
She said the success they have had also involves partnerships with the community. She said locally that is where Perry’s
work comes in, while Dr. Saad Omar, who is with the Institute for Global Health, addressed the need for a worldwide distribution of the vaccines that will ultimately be identified.
Perry, pastor at St. Stephens AME Zion Church in Branford, is an ambassador to the minority community on clinical research and the need to involve people from all socioeconomic levels, across age, gender and race, as testing advances. That is especially needed for COVID-19 which has had a greater impact on Black and Hispanic communities.
Perry said part of the issue is making sure people are informed and are offered a clear picture of the procedures and practices of clinical research. Before COVID-19, he had worked to spread the word on the efficacy of flu vaccines
He has been associated with the Yale Cener for Clinical Investigations for the past decade.
Omar said the trails conducted at Yale take place in some of the most diverse populations
in the country.
“This is important, both from a scientific perspective because we want generalized ability, but also from an equity perspective. If you have data from a diverse population, you can make more informed policies for a range of populations, especially for communities that are disproportionately impacted by this terrible outbreak,” Omar said.
He said a colleague determined one of the immunological disparities of the disease is that it has a greater impact on men.
“That framework can potentially be translated to other aspects of disparities in immunological responses that sit on top of a structure of inequity,” Omar said.
He said policy matters not only in producing science, but in distributing the results of science.
“We can’t just go in with a haphazard approach, we need a plan,” Omar said, and that has been proposed by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, DWashington. He said it addresses inequities and distribution head on. He said Yale researchers are part of national committees that look at the equity and distribution issues of a vaccine.
That distribution is key.
Repeating what others have said, “Vaccinations save lives, not vaccines,” Omar said.
Omar said Yale’s engagement in New Haven is in the context of flu vaccination as a starting point to developing trust with the minority community.
Perry said persons of color have been disproportionately left out of many studies, even when they are disproportionally impacted by a disease.
He said he has been holding town hall meetings with leaders in the community on Zoom, which have been “very effective” in spreading the word about the flu vaccine, a platform that will be available once the coronavirus vaccine is safely developed.
“It is important for us to tell it, because nobody can tell our story for us,” he said of having the message delivered by an African-American church leader.
“They need to hear from religious leaders and members of the community to just reinforce for them without suspicion that what we are doing is for the good of all of us and particularly for people of color,” Perry said.