First Ebola, Now COVID-19: Medical Student Once Again Volunteers To Help Find Cure For A Disease

The best of the best scientists and researchers around the world are endlessly investing all their energy into finding the vaccine to end the novel pandemic Corovirus that has affected over 200 countries.

In order to lend a helping hand, a medical student from Emory University is one of the first people to have volunteered for a vaccine trial that the doctors are pinning their hopes on, to be the one which ends this global nightmare.

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The 31-year-old PhD candidate, Sean Doyle, is in his fourth year of medical school and according to Daily Mail, he received a dose of an experimental drug last month. It was developed by the National Institutes of Health, and Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, Moderna Inc.

Emory University

Based on a USA TODAY report, volunteers in Seattle have also signed up for the vaccine trial and have now moved into the second phase after there were reports of only a few side affects.

Moreover, the reports also add that the participants have no chance of getting infected from the shots since they do not contain the coronavirus itself. Instead, a synthetic messenger RNA (mRNA) is used to immunize against the virus.

RNA stands for Ribonucleic Acid and is the biological process which directs cells to produce something.

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Such trials have the potential to narrow down on something to help the body get immunized against a virus. The RNA vaccine would provoke the cells to form spike proteins that resemble coronavirus' structure. If the trial succeeds, the body will get conditioned to recognise the spike proteins and develop antibodies that could help in protecting against any future infection.

However, as is the case with all medical trials, RNA vaccines are not risk-free and there is no evidence on how well they are going to work in a large group of people.

Dr Amesh Adalja of Johns Hopkins University told CNN, "There is no precedent yet for them being approved for use and, and we don't know everything about them in terms of how they're going to behave in large numbers of people and what the side effect profile they might be."

Dr Adalja also added that vaccine development usually takes up to years and sometimes, even decades. He said, "There are some infectious diseases for which we have no vaccine after decades and decades of work, like HIV or hepatitis C, for example. The only way that we're going to really contain this virus is with the vaccine."

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Coming back to the medical student, Doyle informed CNN that he already knows all the risks he is exposing himself to by participating in a trial for an unknown drug. He said, "There were conversations that I had with friends and family. They all expressed concerns about getting an experimental vaccine like this where no one knows what the side effects might be. But they trusted my judgment."

Also, this isn't the first time Doyle has volunteered to be a part of a medical experiment. Two-and-a-half years ago, he was involved in a trial for the Ebola virus where he was injected with an experimental immunization. In fact, it is his experience of the 18-month trial that made him eligible for the present COVID-19 experiment.

He said, "No one is really sure how it¡¯s going to behave when it¡¯s put in your body. So some of my friends and family indicated a little bit of concern. But I¡¯m familiar with the statistics on how rarely really severe reactions occur. So I wasn¡¯t really that worried about being affected negatively by participating in this trial. It really does seem like the benefit would far outweigh any potential risks."

Emory University

Since SARS-CoV-2 is a highly contagious virus, scientists are trying to come up with a vaccine as quickly as possible and best-case scenarios are aiming at 12 to 18 months.