Find contacts: direct phone number, email address, work experience. Hamilton Bennett, the senior director of vaccine access and partnerships at Moderna, did not anticipate that her team's years of work would soon be thrust into the global spotlight when Moderna became the first American company to jump into the race to a coronavirus vaccine. Bennett considered the project a moral imperative even though success was far from guaranteed and the still-young biotech firm had yet to get a single product to market. This marked the first time the virus had spread on our home turf. A retiree, his big daily event was climbing into his car and making a run south of the borderof Kenmore, that isto neighboring Kirklands Taco Bell. Bennett went back into the software and updated everyones timeline. That was in January 2020, just a month after the first reports of a mysterious new lung illness in China. He was heading toward the snow-cloaked Alps for the World Economic Forum at the Davos ski resort, where corporate leaders meet each year in a shared desire to save the world through capitalism. Someone less prone to paranoia finally talked them off the ledge, and Bancel settled on planting a GPS chip in the package so Moderna could track its golden goose the entire way. Learn about our mission, vision, values and priorities, Find out about BIO's programs & initiatives, Meet BIO's Senior Leadership and Board of Directors, Get to know the outstanding people and companies BIO supports, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, VACCINE ACCESS AND PARTNERSHIPS, MODERNA, The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for more geographic diversity in the production, 1201 New York Avenue NW, Suite 1300, Washington, DC, 20005 202-962-9200, Vaccine manufacturing in Africa: Challenges and opportunities, BIO Intellectual Property Counsels Committee Conference. When they were ready to go, the GPS chips tucked safely inside, there was one last thing to do: The team crowded around the boxes, with big smiles and thumbs up, and snapped a selfie. It would need to undergo a series of experiments, the longest of which was the requisite sterility test for any product injected into humans. "The world was looking at us because we had started the first study in the U.S. We had done it faster than anyone before had ever done it. Thats when he realized: Everyone was following the projects progress. Age. Moderna had worked with Graham and the NIH over the past few years on its quest to bring a whole new class of vaccines to market. Offers may be subject to change without notice. The plan worked. And now, as Moderna awaits potential emergency use authorization by the FDA, Bennett said she is proud of what her team has accomplished. Vaccines & Biodefense. It was 7 p.m. on a Friday, and the streets below in Kendall Square had already emptied out for the weekend when Graham asked Bennett if Moderna would be interested in using the new virus to test the companys accelerated vaccine-making capabilities. It took 14 days, and there was no way to shave any time off that one. Moderna, the little-known biotech company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been at the forefront of vaccine development since the outbreak. Jennifer Haller and her husband were driving to a hockey game south of Seattle on February 29 when she heard on the radio that the United States had suffered its first COVID-19 death. Ultimately, the committee agreed to go for it. Multilateral Organizations. Bancel says he might be ready to submit for FDA approval for the vaccine by years end. Moderna's senior director of vaccine access and partnerships at Moderna, is 35-year-old Hamilton Bennett. The news sent Modernas stock price so high that Bancel became a billionaire overnight. The United States has yet to approve a vaccine made this way, though large-scale human trials are under way. "We've come a long way in 12 months," Bennett told ABC News in an exclusive interview for "The Shot: Race for the Vaccine," a one-hour special edition of "20/20.". In contrast, Modernas vaccines contain an engineered strand of messenger RNA, which tells the bodys cells to produce a very specific part of a pathogen that will ignite an immune response. Sera from participants immunized on a prime-boost schedule with the mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine were tested for neutralizing activity against several SARS-CoV-2 variants, including variants of concern (VOCs) and variants of interest (VOIs), compared to neutralization of the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 virus (designated as D614G). On March 16, Haller woke up early, put on a tank top, threw a sweatshirt over it, and downed a scrambled egg that her husband had prepared. Bancel, of course, hopes that Modernas vaccine works, but he doesnt want to be alone in the winners circle. Of those that do, not all will make it to Phase 3, and no one knows whichif anywill ultimately prove effective and ostensibly save the world. Bancel forwarded Graham's email to Hamilton Bennett, an energetic and idealistic 35-year-old who'd spent the previous three years as program leader on Moderna's vaccine portfolio. SARS-CoV-2 is the third novel betacoronavirus in the last 20 years to cause substantial human disease; however, unlike . From his kitchen window, he had a full view of the sea. Since time was of the essence, Moderna decided to do all of the steps simultaneously. It had taken only 25 days. Although the emergence of COVID-19 was first publicly reported in late December 2019, there was still very little known about the viral outbreak. However, when the severity of the pandemic became evident, "knowing what mRNA could do, having confidence in our platform, we thought, how do we show the global public health community what mRNA can do in a pandemic?" In addition, because early cameras were unable to accurately capture details of the sky or reflections in water after being adjusted for the light of a typical land photograph, Bennett wove together negatives from multiple photographs of land, sky and water before creating a final print. Bennett was widely . Douty died in 1884 and Bennett married Evaline Marshall in 1890, with whom he had two more children. Moderna's phase 1 study had been initially expected to begin in late April, but acknowledging the urgency of the situation, Bennett's team pushed the timeline forward. Lets get this started. Bancel texted him: We need to talk. It had been 42 days since they designed the vaccine. In the midst of much uncertainty and chaos, Bennett, has emerged as one of the unsung heroes of the pandemic, working feverishly and tirelessly behind the scenes throughout the year to help engineer a vaccine that could potentially save millions of lives. Bancel, whod spent much of his career at companies that focused on infectious disease, raised his eyebrows. Bennett, who holds graduate degrees from University of Washington in Environmental Health and Microbiology, as well a certificate in Epidemiology from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has over 10 years of research experience and had spent the last four years as a researcher and leader on the company's vaccine portfolio. Henry Hamilton Bennett was a photographer born Farnham, Quebec, Canada. Each day, as the coronavirus advanced around the globe, the quest for a vaccine took on an even higher level of importance and became a greater sense of pride for workers at the companyeven for some far away from the manufacturing room floor. Global Markets & Trade. But on the sidelines, far from the spotlight of the main stage, much of the chatter was about the virus spreading through China. Not so long ago, one of Modernas products was left outside of cold storage once it was no longer in the companys hands, and the entire load had to be tossed in the trash. Stand up for innovation. The company would either celebrate one hell of public market debut, or fail while the whole world watched. Learn about our mission, vision, values and priorities, Find out about BIO's programs & initiatives, Meet BIO's Senior Leadership and Board of Directors, Get to know the outstanding people and companies BIO supports. Trump looked him in the eye and asked, Can I count on you? Bringing you daily news at the intersection of biotechnology, politics, patients & the planet. Bennett said. And now, as Moderna awaits potential emergency use authorization by the FDA, Bennett said she is proud of what her team has accomplished. In the early days of the race, Inovio CEO Joseph Kim seemed to relish the competition. Sure. His descendants continued to operate the studio until 1999, when the building was restored to its 1908 appearance and became a historic site operated by the Wisconsin Historical Society. Barouch had worked in the past with Janssen, the pharmaceutical arm of Johnson & Johnson. Similar debates were taking place among many of the world's top pharmaceutical firms, according to Bennett, who described a late-January industry conference call about emerging infectious diseases where several top echelon executives had expressed concerns about the risks of joining the global efforts. Health equality in access to medicines and ensuring diversity in clinical trials. Copyright 2023 ABC News Internet Ventures. The site that the NIH had chosen for the trialthe only site it had selectedwas in Seattle. In late April, Moderna was still at the front of the pack, planning on Phase 2 trials this summer and then Phase 3 trials in the fall. At the time, 35-year-old Hamilton Bennett, the senior director of vaccine access and partnerships at Moderna, a small, then-relatively unknown biotech company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, did not anticipate that her team's years of work would soon be thrust into the global spotlight when Moderna became the first American company to jump into the race to a coronavirus vaccine. And if we don't do it, maybe no one else will," Bennett said, while recalling her reasoning at the time. He clicked on the story and scrolled down looking for details: 59 people sick with viral pneumonia. The batch was sterileit had passed the test. After Bennett created the new shutter, he was able to take clear pictures of moving subjects. They are also relatively easy to scale and produceyou can design any mRNA vaccine in the world on a computer and manufacture it in a single facility regardless of what disease it is for. At one point, they started having a fantastical discussion about using some combination of high-end cold-chain logistics combined with Brinks-style security. Big Pharma had officially joined the race. Get started for free, then add your whole team. The cat is out of the bag, he thought. Antimicrobial Resistance. Its going to be the 1918 flu pandemic. Later that afternoon, the batch was finished. Bennett received much attention for his advanced techniques, and was commissioned by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad to photograph the landscape along the company's track in Wisconsin. Unlike more traditional vaccines, which consist of weakened or inactivated forms of a virus, thus stimulating the body's immune response to create antibodies, a vaccine using mRNA sends a set of instructions into cells to teach them to make a protein, which will trigger an immune response inside our bodies to fight off the disease. And stand up for science. Human Health. Two days later, on March 2, Bancel flew to the nations capital and got into a car bound for the White House. Bennett described. In fact, that data was so encouraging that Bancel was set to announce in a few days time that the company would be doubling down on its vaccine-development program in 2020, with hopes of getting the worlds first mRNA vaccineand what would be Modernas first licensed productonto the market in the next few years. After launching successful phase 2 and 3 trials, Moderna reported an efficacy rate of 94.1%. Days later, once she found out shed been selected, several friends tried to dissuade her. She had managed Modernas Zika program that produced a vaccine in a mere 10 months, a company record. Bennett was no stranger to working at breakneck speed. David L. Ryan/Boston Globe via Getty Images, FILE. But when the first documented case in the United States was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Jan. 20, Bennett's team realized they needed "to move much faster. Hamilton Bennett (she/her) is the Senior Director of Vaccine Access and Partnerships at Moderna, a company pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines. This new type of a vaccine relied on a highly innovative and experimental technology, using messenger RNA (mRNA), described informally by Moderna as the "software of life.". Moderna scientists had never tried to make a vaccine this quickly before, and there was risk of straining the platform and the team beyond their breaking points. Haller quickly filled out the questionnaire and crossed her fingers. During the small hours of a cold January morning, Stphane Bancel slipped into the kitchen while his wife and children were still in bed. In addition, what if a vaccine wasnt needed? She might not be on the frontline, but she at least wanted to be on the battlefield. See more of The World Libertarians Want on Facebook. We don't have to grow a virus and then extract proteins from it, your body becomes its own little bio factory and creates the vaccine for you." All Rights Reserved. Afeyan apologized to his daughter, quickly rose from the table, and without putting on his coat walked out of the restaurant and onto Mass. Finally, Bennett photographed the huge circular paintings known as cycloramas, publishing sets of stereoviews on the Civil War cycloramas of the Battles of Shiloh, Gettysburg and Missionary Ridge, the engagement between the Monitor and the Virginia, as well as the Crucifixion. Hamilton Bennett and her team got it done in months . In his world, a global pandemic was about to descend like a biblical plague, and whatever distractions the vaccine caused internally at Moderna were irrelevant. The next day, she was back in the office at 7 a.m. Everyone at Moderna was on tenterhooks waiting for manufacturing to finish making the vaccine. Find contact's direct phone number, email address, work history, and more. The Journal contained enough business news to keep Bancel occupied, but it was another headline that grabbed his attentionabout the outbreak of a mysterious illness in China. Bancel had been burned by shipping before. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Washington in Environmental Health and Microbiology, and a certificate in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Since then, new evidence has emerged showing that Moderna did not name NIH scientists as co-inventors in three patent applications covering the composition of the spike protein sequence encoded by mRNA-1273. Nov. 9, 2021 The advocacy group Public Citizen has closely followed a patent dispute between Moderna and the National Institutes of Health over Moderna's coronavirus vaccine. The next day, Bancel dialed into the meeting with the executive leaders, who were crowded around a conference table at Modernas headquarters with Bennett and the members of her team that had been tirelessly working on what up until that point essentially amounted to a demonstration project. Up until then, all of the U.S. COVID-19 cases had been imported. This isnt going to be SARS. Opportunities for women, Black and other minority populations in the growing Bio-economy. Hamilton Bennett's business email address is h**@modernatx.com. Did you know that 90% of clinical programs ultimately fail to lead to FDA approval? Bennett also took pictures outside the state, photographing an ice palace in St. Paul, Minnesota and the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. He didnt like the sound of it one bit, so he copied the story link and pasted it into an email directed at Barney Graham, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health. Facing down a pandemic the likes of which the world hadnt seen in a century, Bennett, senior director of vaccine access and partnerships at Moderna, was tasked with developing a COVID vaccine even before the viruss genome had been sequenced. ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, VACCINE ACCESS AND PARTNERSHIPS, MODERNA THERAPEUTICS, INC Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States Hamilton Bennett (she/her) is the Senior Director of Vaccine Access and Partnerships at Moderna, a company pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines. Stand up for innovation. The likely suspects had been ruled out. As they ironed out the details of their partnership, public health officials delivered sobering news to the American public: Illinois had logged the United States first recorded case of community transmission. A major advantage of mRNA is that it is very easy to manufacture these RNA sequences once researchers know the sequence of the viral protein they want to target. "We'd set our timelines for phase 1, thinking, 'we could possibly start a phase 1 study in April,'" Bennett said. "Every day we just accelerated that timeline faster and faster. Kaiser needed to find dozens of healthy people who would volunteer as guinea pigs for Modernas Phase 1 safety trial. Related Tags: Information on keynote speaking engagements, personal appearances, corporate entertainment and appearance fees for Hamilton Bennett, an inspirational motivational speaker. On the 14th and final day of the sterility test, the quality control team told Bancel they would not have any news until later that evening. This page lists the scientific contributions of an author, who either does not have a. "We believe that our platform is going to make a difference, and we believe that we're uniquely capable of responding to this pandemic. At Moderna, we believe messenger RNA, or mRNA, is the "software of life."Every cell in the body uses mRNA to provide real-time instructions to make the proteins necessary to drive all aspects of biology, including in human health and disease.Given its essential role, we believe mRNA could be used to create a new category of medicines with significant potential to improve the lives of patients . Traditional vaccines are made from a weakened, dead, or small piece of a pathogena virus or bacteriawhich prompts the body to fight off the invader and builds up immunity for when the real deal comes along. News of the first U.S. death and the spread of the coronavirus in Seattle were also on Bancels mind, but for slightly different reasons. Bancel felt a 500-pound weight lift off his shoulders. By the weekend of January 25, just days after Moderna decided to go full steam ahead, he was convinced the world was going to need a vaccine for this virus. My hope for the world is that many of us get to the finish line, so we can stop this thing, Bancel says. Log In. Five Healthful Boston-Area Meal-Delivery Services, Introducing Our 2021 List of Top Dentists, This search result is here to prevent scraping, On the Market: A Penthouse Unit in a Former Boston Brewery, Here's Where to Find the Best Fish and Chips in Boston, Here are the 2023 Boston Marathon Winners, The Interview: Crime-Fiction TV Writer and Novelist Dennis Lehane, Careers and Internships at Boston Magazine. He needs to just stop until we know whats going on. Hallers mother agreed, but it did little to alleviate Hallers sense of helplessness. At the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, study recruiters leapt into action. It can take from 10 to 15 years to develop a new vaccine. Powered and implemented by Interactive Data Managed Solutions. If you're a human and see this, please ignore it. This sounds risky, one of them told her. and spreading rapidly unbeknownst to people across the globe. As people across the country saw more and more of Bennett's photographs of the Wisconsin Dells, they began to flock to Kilbourn City to see the rock formations in person. Contact an All American Speakers Bureau booking agent for more information on Hamilton Bennett speaking fees, availability, speech topics and cost to hire for your next live or virtual event. In January, with exponential growth in infection rates in the city of Wuhan, China, and increasing evidence of high community transmission, Moderna's leadership acknowledged that the outbreak was a serious threat and asked Bennett to begin working on a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as the new virus's genome sequence was obtained. Moderna had done it: staked its claim as one of the first biotech firms in the world to develop a viable jab. Her research and development experience and laser-like focus on COVID helped Moderna get its vaccine into early clinical trials within two monthsand receive FDA emergency use authorization by December. We are here to help! Hamilton Bennett works in the Research industry. Haller felt a small prick in her left arm, followed by the sensation of the syringes cool liquid contents slipping into her biceps, and the rising satisfaction of knowing that she had finally found a way to do something. I would come back by 7 a.m. Corbett's academic biography notes " the vaccine concept incorporatedin mRNA-1273 was designed by Dr. Corbett's NIH team from viral sequence and rapidly deployed to industry partner, Moderna, Inc." 19 According to Dr.Corbett, an earlier partnershipwith Moderna focused on the MERS coronavirus helped acceleratetheSARS- -2 response.
