eason 1 of The Road to a Vaccine is an eight-episode educational video series that examines the latest efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and breaks down the complex process of developing a coronavirus vaccine.
Host Lisa Ling talks to leading scientists and researchers, healthcare workers on the front lines and public health experts around the world who are working collaboratively to bring an end to the deadly pandemic.
Episode 1 Recap:
In a taped interview, Ling talks to Paul Stoffels, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer at Johnson & Johnson, about his long career as an infectious disease physician and his lifelong quest to combat viruses such as HIV, Ebola, SARS, MERS—and now the novel coronavirus. Dr. Stoffels explains how COVID-19 is different from viral diseases of the past, when a coronavirus vaccine might come to market and what the world might look like when we do have a vaccine.
Next, Rinke Bos, Ph.D., Principal Scientist at Janssen Vaccines & Prevention, appears live from her lab in Leiden, the Netherlands, to give Ling an overview of what a vaccine is and how it differs from a medicine that treats a disease and explains how a coronavirus vaccine might work. Dr. Bos also explains why a vaccine is the only way to truly eradicate the COVID-19 pandemic and the different approaches companies and academic laboratories are using to find a coronavirus vaccine and bring it to trial. Bos also discusses the platform Johnson & Johnson is using, which has already been tested in investigational vaccines for Ebola, HIV and RSV, among other diseases.
Tom Inglesby, M.D., Director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, also joins Ling live to discuss the Center's role in working with national and international governments and leaders in industry to determine how to get through an epidemic or pandemic—whether that's through new coronavirus treatments, vaccines, diagnostic tools or technologies—and when and how to reopen society and ease social distancing. He and Ling also discuss the future of travel and potential road maps to recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic around the world.
Finally, Ling takes viewer questions for Dr. Bos and Dr. Inglesby, including why a coronavirus vaccine is taking so long to produce and whether COVID-19 might be seasonal or sensitive to heat.
Season 1
Episode 1
How a COVID-19 Vaccine Might Work. Plus, How Quickly We Could Get There
Ling is the Executive Producer and host of This Is Life on CNN. She has also been a field correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show and a contributor to ABC News' Nightline.
Bos is a Principal Scientist at Janssen Vaccines & Prevention in Leiden, the Netherlands. Her work focuses on the research and development of vaccines against viral infectious diseases. She is currently involved in the development of the COVID-19 vaccine and is responsible for the generation and characterization of the candidate vaccines.
Dr. Inglesby is the Director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Center for Health Security is dedicated to protecting people’s health from the consequences of epidemics and disasters.
Dr. Stoffels is the Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Scientific Officer at Johnson & Johnson. He spearheads the research and product pipeline by leading teams across all of the company's sectors to set the company-wide innovation agenda, discovering and developing transformational healthcare solutions.
Roland Zahn, Ph.D., a Janssen scientist and expert in viral vaccines, was at the front lines of research during the Ebola outbreak. Today he and his team are working at record speed to help deliver a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
