Moderna Therapeutics, a biotech company co-founded by Noubar Afeyan, Co-Founder of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, has shipped the first batches of its COVID-19 vaccine, Time reports.
The vaccine was created just 42 days after the genetic sequence of the COVID-19 virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was released by Chinese researchers in mid-January.
The first vials were sent to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, which will ready the vaccine for human testing as early as April.
Moderna’s vaccine against COVID-19 was developed in record time because it’s based on a relatively new genetic method that does not require growing huge amounts of virus.
Instead, the vaccine is packed with mRNA, the genetic material that comes from DNA and makes proteins.
