The women who stood tall behind Covid-19 vaccines

Our success in vaccine research has proven that women teams and leaders have delivered - we need to continue to invest in them, provide the right ecosystem and have confidence in their capabilities

Scientific research requires a skill that can navigate complex processes, have the necessary patience and a strong conviction to take risks, and vaccine research and development is no different. Women have exhibited these inherent strengths on many occasions. How can women be any less adept at conducting this complex process of vaccine research, development, and deployment?

In the global history of vaccine research - from Dr Isabel Morgan, who proved that inactive viruses could produce immunity, to Dr Ruth Bishop, who discovered rotavirus as a major cause of severe diarrhoea in children - women scientists have played a vital role. We have seen the same in the present Covid pandemic.

Role of women in Covid-19 vaccine development

As we went about finding possible solutions to manage Covid-19 and creating a rich vaccine research pipeline, not sure at the time which one of them will finally click, many labs and teams across the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the industry, with a strong representation of women, were actively engaged in delivering the world’s most in-demand product. Interestingly, half of the team comprised women in the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), which spearheaded the collaboration between industry, government, and academia during the vaccine-development phases.

These women scientists, along with their men colleagues, made a significant contribution as the DBT, along with other government arms, planned and invested in a wide range of technologies and platforms to deliver a vaccine pipeline that is numerically rich and technology-wise diverse. Working simultaneously on different vaccine candidates was a strategy we adopted because even if multiple vaccine candidates succeeded, one didn’t know which one would emerge the safest, most efficacious, and most convenient to use.

Today in our country’s Covid vaccine portfolio, which has been rolled out, we have, on the one hand, the most traditional technologies - such as Covaxin, developed around the whole inactivated virus. On the other, we have broken new grounds by launching ZyCovD, the world’s first DNA vaccine. During the pandemic, our scientific community and innovation ecosystem squeezed in years of learning into a year and delivered decades of performance in months.

World over, women have played a crucial role in this important Covid Vaccine Mission. For instance, one of the most recent made-in-India vaccines to receive approval for restricted use, Corbevax, comes from Biological E, which Mahima Datla heads. We have Suchitra Ella of Bharat Biotech, who was instrumental in the development of Covaxin and continues to play a crucial role in the development of intranasal vaccines. Globally, Dr Sarah Gilbert, Dr Kizzmekia Corbett, and Dr Katalin Kariko played significant roles in the development of vaccines of Oxford-Astra Zeneca, Pfizer and Moderna.

In India, among the biotech and other startups that BIRAC worked with to develop different pandemic related solutions across diagnostics, PPEs, masks, ventilators, screening devices, sanitation materials, etc., about 30 to 40 per cent were led by women entrepreneurs. Most importantly, the role of women vaccinators - our nurses, ANMs and healthcare workers in implementing this mammoth exercise, particularly at the grassroots level, has been invaluable.

Becoming a leader: A process, not an overnight decision

These examples of women science leaders in the government or the private sector who delivered during the deep crisis didn’t happen suddenly over the last one and a half years of the pandemic. The hard work, the preparations, and the focus on leadership development, which is behind it have been that of years.

My experience is that leadership is not about waking up one day and deciding to be one. It is about entering any field as a professional, taking up every new assignment as a window of opportunity, and shouldering responsibilities that together make the difference.

Women have today clearly rejected the mindset that they are better suited for soft jobs and wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure of hard jobs. We see women performing exceedingly well in all spheres of life, and as a professional, they have the capacities and competence to take on everything that a male colleague does and can do. It is essential for us to ensure that we create that level playing field within professions that allows the woman professional to discover the defining leadership qualities within her.

When I consciously left active lab research over three decades back to enter this exciting new space of biotech as a science manager, I wanted to create new enablers that can facilitate large areas of research. Since then, there has been learning on each step. Working on a bold and ambitious project such as mapping the biodiversity of the entire country in the 1990s taught me how teams come together to work on something labelled as “not possible ”. Later, as a part of this larger project, when we started exploring drugs from microbes, I realised the power of industry-academia collaborations and learnt to build and strengthen them. It started small, but today it is the world’s most extensive microbial collection at the Pune-based National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS).

Among the many such opportunities that came my way was also the most important responsibility to build BIRAC from scratch as a new public sector entity. The first of its kind in the government to foster and nurture the biotech startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Many women scientists across the public sector, industry and academia would agree that the richness of responsibilities they are entrusted with shapes the leader in them.

So, when the Covid-19 struck, it turned out to be our biggest test to draw from all our past learnings and apply them in an emergency situation. It was not an easy decision to invest public money in high-risk research for vaccine development. But the way BIRAC, the DBT and other public institutions have delivered on the vaccine research and development and driven the Mission Covid Suraksha is a matter of great pride for the entire nation.

Since early 2020 when we started with multiple vaccine candidates, crossing every milestone was an achievement for the team - be it when our strategy was accepted, when the investment proposal was cleared, or when the first vaccine rolled out. I had a tracker on my table, where a dot moved as each vaccine cleared a step in a clinical trial, safety data, efficacy data, approvals from the Drug Control General of India and so on. Each such step meant covering many miles and was a great sense of satisfaction and pride for the team.

Today, within two years of the virus hitting our shores, we have already launched three life-saving vaccines developed in India and have in the making a handful of others in advanced stages. That is no mean feat. Our success of vaccine research has once again proven the fact that women teams and leaders have delivered — we just need to continue to invest in them, provide them with the right ecosystem and have the confidence in their capabilities — they will continue to deliver, and the benefits will be for the whole society to reap.

(Dr Renu Swarup is former Secretary, Department of Bio-Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India)

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