By Niyi Akinnaso
Two days ago, Monday, June 14, 2021, Kizzmekia Shonda Corbett (Kizzy, as she is popularly called) reported for duty at Harvard University. She joined the world-renowned Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. At the same time, she will hold another appointment as the Shutzer Assistant Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Remember her?
She is the 35-year old African-American woman credited with the groundbreaking research that led to the development of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, using the mRNA technology. The vaccine she pioneered was the first COVID-19 vaccine to go into trial in March 2020. It was the first of its kind in the world and the fastest progress ever toward a vaccine for a pathogen never encountered before.
It is not surprising, then, that, in announcing her appointment, the Harvard School of Public Health added that Dr. Corbett will head the new Coronaviruses & Other Relevant Emerging Infectious Diseases Lab “to study and understand the interface between hosts’ immune systems and viruses that cause respiratory disease, with the goal of informing development of novel and potentially universal vaccines”.
I began to track Dr. Corbett’s professional career since March 3, 2020, when she was the only Black person, the youngest, and only woman among a group of top scientists, who received former President Donald Trump at the National Institute of Health, where she was a fellow at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Vaccine Research Center.
As the lead scientist in the lab’s vaccine development research, she was the one who explained to Trump how the vaccine being developed uses a genetic code sequence, known as messenger RNA (mRNA), to prompt the body’s immune system to react when the coronavirus spike protein is detected. The vaccine would then block the infection process.
How did Dr. Corbett come about this achievement and what messages is she sending to Nigeria and the world? I can think of three or four.
To start with, she is telling Nigerian youths to start early and get focused. Rather than join gangs, fraternities, or cults, or go after iPhone or other material things, it pays off to focus on one’s studies from Day 1. Dr. Corbett went to public schools all the way.
Her experience also points to the significant role of mentorship. Her Elementary School teacher detected her promise early. She told her parents, when she was in the fourth grade, to support her by placing her in advanced classes. The same teacher would later describe Dr. Corbett as “The best in my 30 years of teaching”.
Dr. Corbett did not only start early, she also focused on what she wanted to be. First, without knowing precisely what type of scientist she would be, she began to focus on Mathematics and the sciences. While in High School, she began to embrace biomedical research, when she had her first experience in working in research labs with scientists. She would spend her following summers in various labs, learning and participating in biomedical research.
Starting early and focusing on her studies earned her accolades and scholarships for her bachelors and doctorate degrees as well as internship at the NIH. She would later join the Vaccine Research Center of the Institute as a postdoctoral research fellow and remain there for the following six years.
A key experience that really prepared her for vaccine research was her doctoral dissertation research in Sri Lanka, where she studied how people produce antibodies in response to dengue fever, and how the genetics of dengue fever impact the severity of a disease. As part of her dissertation research, she worked as a visiting scholar at Genetech Research Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Her meritorious dissertation work and her previous internship at the NIH earned her a research fellowship at the Institute’s Vaccine Research Center. While working on previous coronaviruses (SARS and MERS) at the Center’s lab and elsewhere, she was able to identify a simple way to make spike proteins that are stabilized, immunogenetic, and manufacturable. It was this experience that prepared the way for quickly developing the mRNA vaccine as soon as the genes of the new coronavirus vaccine (COVID-19) were sequenced.
From a small town and little known Elementary School in North Carolina, Dr. Corbett became the saviour of the world. Time Magazine quickly recognized her as one of 100 top innovators. In her profile for the Magazine, world famous Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, puts it modestly this way: Dr. Corbett has “been central to the development of the Moderna mRNA vaccine and the Eli Lilly therapeutic monoclonal antibody that were first to enter clinical trials in the U.S.” and that “her work will have a substantial impact on ending the worst respiratory-disease pandemic in more than 100 years.”
There are numerous lessons here for the Nigerian government at federal, state, and local levels. There are thousands of Corbetts in the Nigerian educational system, from elementary grades to postgraduate level. Unfortunately, however, the system no longer provides the necessary infrastructure and ecosystem for desirable educational outcomes. Facilities are poor, if at all available. Teachers are neither well trained nor sufficiently remunerated. Classrooms are poorly equipped or not equipped at all. Students have become disinterested in learning in environments that fail to nurture their potentials.
The hiring of Dr. Corbett by Harvard University is in itself a message to Nigerian universities on how to maintain high standards or raise them. Having trained and worked in the American university system for over three decades, I can imagine the “juicy” offer made to Dr. Corbett to move from NIH to Harvard. As indicated earlier, the offer includes a dual appointment and a new lab to head.
True, Nigerian universities are constrained in terms of how much salary they could pay, but nothing stops them from creatively attracting and rewarding outstanding scholars, researchers, and even public servants (who qualify). But, no, our faculty specializes in going on strike for remuneration and past allowances, fighting for unmerited promotion, or struggling to become the next Vice Chancellor. Unfortunately, some University administrations and even Governing Councils contribute to the malaise.
Finally, whatever happened to the billions allocated to vaccine research in Nigeria? And where are the vaccines claimed to have been purchased for billions of Naira?
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