‘Nothing is impossible,’ says lab ace Nita Patel
Abstract
Nita Patel has come a long way from her beginnings in Sojitra, a farming village in India's Gujarat state. There, when she was 4 years old, her family fell into poverty after her father nearly died from tuberculosis (TB). He never worked again and told Patel she should become a doctor and find a cure. Patel's resulting quest to battle TB and other infectious diseases has led her to the position she occupies today: As a senior director of vaccine development at Novavax, a small firm among giant pharma companies racing to test a vaccine for the pandemic coronavirus, she and her all-female crew are an essential part of Novavax's lab team. Their sophisticated tests verified that the heart of the company's vaccine—its version of the virus' spike protein—performed as it should in cells and generated virus-neutralizing antibodies in animals. "Nita is absolutely invaluable," says her boss, chief scientist Gale Smith. "She's a genius."
- Publication:
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Science
- Pub Date:
- November 2020
- DOI:
- 10.1126/science.370.6517.652
- Bibcode:
- 2020Sci...370..652W
- Keywords:
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- MEDICINE; EPIDEMIOLOGY