Frank DePierro \u201903 collects vaccine data at record speed.<\/strong><\/p>\n W<\/span>hen coverage of the pandemic took over the media in the spring of 2020, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson were the first companies to announce they were making a COVID-19 vaccine. Those names quickly became synonymous with what was hoped would allow us to live with some normality again. Visits with Grandma and Grandpa. Evenings out in our favorite restaurant. Even routine trips to the grocery store.<\/p>\n The team at Pfizer, including senior director Frank DePierro, wondered why their company wasn\u2019t in the COVID-19 vaccine game, too. After all, Pfizer had a strong vaccine portfolio, brilliant scientists, and thanks to DePierro, a strong informatics team that he had built from nearly scratch in his 15 years with the pharmaceutical company (11 of which were in vaccine research and development).<\/p>\n The world was waiting, and when the decision finally came down from management that Pfizer would begin development of a vaccine, it became top priority. \u201cIt went from nothing, to \u2018This needs to move really quickly,\u2019\u201d says DePierro. A lot of pressure was directed at the scientists and the labs, but as they worked, they turned to DePierro\u2019s team to provide information systems for the data and analytics to tell them if the science was sound.<\/p>\n That urgency meant that DePierro had to rethink standard operations without sacrificing safety, quality, and science. In normal times, his team supports Pfizer studies with computational systems and models that provide necessary data \u2014 data that regulators require and helps scientists to decide when to toss an idea, when to push it, and when to take that next step.<\/p>\n But with COVID, the serial steps that would normally take place in the labs \u2014 for example, allowing sample processing, determining formulations or dosage, and how to analyze data \u2014 had to be thought through all at once. The science behind the vaccine couldn\u2019t be rushed or changed, so the time had to be made up in the collection and analyzation of the data. \u201cMy team programmed systems for all these various outcomes and performed statistical analysis of all these things in parallel,\u201d says DePierro.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were starting to build systems when we didn\u2019t even know what was going to be needed yet,\u201d he says. Having the systems in place meant the scientists could receive and process hundreds of thousands of clinical samples, and move forward on ideas that showed promise. The quest became 24\/7 for months on end.<\/p>\n In late 2020, as the world learned that Pfizer had produced a vaccine to combat COVID-19, the excitement was building inside the walls of Pfizer\u2019s labs. But so were the nerves of DePierro and his team. Everyone knew that they finally had enough data to determine effectiveness. They just didn\u2019t know how effective the vaccine might prove to be. \u201cNo one knew that the data was going to come back at 95% effective at preventing COVID-19,\u201d says DePierro. \u201cIt could have just as easily said 35%.\u201d<\/p>\n While other vaccine manufacturers shared efficacy results soon after, in this case, it wasn\u2019t all about competition. It was about creating a solution to a worldwide problem in record time.<\/p>\n As he watched people in line for COVID vaccines as 2020 wound down, all those hours and forethought paid off. \u201cWow,\u201d he recalls thinking. \u201cMy team helped make that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Greg Porreca \u201902 isolates pockets of genes to find virus variants.<\/strong><\/p>\n W<\/span>hen Greg Porreca was earning his PhD, he worked in a lab with an entrepreneurial advisor. Together they took many projects \u2014 focused on genetic testing \u2014 right from lab to industry. \u201cFrom that point, I got pretty excited about working in industry versus being an academic scientist,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Porreca quickly made a name for himself in business, co-founding a company that would provide genetic testing for in vitro fertilization patients. When the company was acquired, he took the knowledge he had gained from the experience and developed another company, Molecular Loop, a group that provides kits that allow labs to do genetic testing around issues like reproductivity and inherited cancer.<\/p>\n The broad technology behind the business is DNA sequencing \u2014 reading the gene sequence of a patient or a virus. But typically, labs don\u2019t need to see the whole genome sequence to do their work, just specific areas, which scientists can isolate by using specific reagents or compounds. \u201cOur kit allows the laboratory to isolate just the regions that they\u2019re interested in,\u201d says Porreca. \u201cSo, if we\u2019re working with a lab that\u2019s doing inherited cancer, we would sell them a kit that has the reagents that they need to isolate the cancer genes. Or if it\u2019s a lab that\u2019s doing reproductive testing, there would be a different set of reagents in there to isolate out the genes that are relevant to that.\u201d<\/p>\n Molecular Loop was doing good business, but then the pandemic disrupted their progress. Suddenly every one of his lab clients were focused on COVID testing. \u201cWe said, \u2018You know what? We think we can adapt our technology to do variant monitoring,\u2019\u201d says Porreca.<\/p>\n Molecular Loop spent the better part of 2020 rethinking their technology to help in the fight against COVID-19. By early 2021, they were ready to shop their COVID testing kits around to a few big labs, including Labcorp, a major player in the testing scene. \u201cOver a period of a few months, we fine-tuned it with them,\u201d says Porreca. \u201cThey decided that all of the variant monitoring work they were doing for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be done using our kits.\u201d<\/p>\n Molecular Loop\u2019s kits allow labs to determine whether or not a patient has COVID, and can also determine if a positive COVID sample contains a variant \u2014 ultra important info for the CDC to have in hand as new variants like Delta and Omicron make their way across the world. \u201cAll of these sequences get sent to the CDC so that they\u2019re able to see in a community whether new things start circulating,\u201d Porreca says. It also helps the CDC determine exactly how much of each variant strain is out there.<\/p>\n Molecular Loop\u2019s kits are not the only products on the table, but they tend to be simple to use and offer a wider look at the COVID landscape.<\/p>\n \u201cOur solution allows scientists to see more of that full genome than they can see with other technologies. That translates into more data for the CDC and a higher chance that they\u2019re going to pick up a variant,\u201d says Porreca.<\/p>\n As we learn to operate in a new world, Molecular Loop will add their COVID kits to their other line of products and broaden their portfolio and build a bigger team. Says Porreca, \u201cIt\u2019s all in how you react to a situation and turn it into something that\u2019s both good for business and good for society.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tosan Boyo \u201907 cradles his city and gives room to grieve.<\/strong><\/p>\n I<\/span>n early 2020, the San Francisco mayor\u2019s office reached out to Tosan Boyo with a request that he help combat an impending pandemic as deputy commander of the San Francisco COVID-19 Operations Center, which was then working to track and quarantine travelers from China. But Boyo turned them down. As the chief operating officer of San Francisco General Hospital, the city\u2019s only Level I trauma center and psych hospital, he had his hands full. So the mayor\u2019s office sent a second request. Then a third.<\/p>\n Finally, Boyo offered to take on the position for a few weeks until he could make a recommendation for a new leader. But just as he was nearing his self-imposed deadline, the Grand Princess cruise ship arrived in the San Francisco Bay with 21 initial positive cases of COVID-19 on board. From that moment, the city\u2019s work would no longer focus on returning travelers from China, and Boyo would, instead, spend the next nine months managing healthcare operations of COVID-19 for the city. It was a massive task. The city had to quickly create the infrastructure to manage the surge and coordinate among the Department of Public Health, and the Department of Public Safety, and the Chambers of Commerce. Ultimately, the work was a success. \u201cOne of the greatest accomplishments of my life is the fact that San Francisco had the lowest death rates and new case rates, and highest testing rates compared to any other densely populated city in the U.S.,\u201d says Boyo.<\/p>\n By the fall of 2020, Boyo brought his experience battling COVID with him to another new position as senior vice president for hospital operations at John Muir Health. Now well into the pandemic, the city was about to enter its third surge of cases as the holidays crept close. Boyo was tasked with managing all operations of a hospital full of exhausted healthcare workers who had faced both the pandemic and the social unrest that followed the killing of George Floyd. In addition, Boyo was asked to lead the COVID-19 Command Center at JMH, which meant organizing vaccinations for his workers (some of the first in the U.S. to receive them) and for local communities \u2014 especially ensuring that the hardest-hit populations had equal access to testing and vaccines.<\/p>\n It was a complicated operation, but Boyo found that not all innovations through crisis have to be complicated. One in particular was beautiful in its simplicity: a space within JMH for healthcare workers to cry if they needed to, to process lost patients and family members and people like Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. \u201cAs a leader, I asked myself: how do I stop the bleeding of my team who are feeling emotionally and physically drained?\u201d says Boyo. \u201cThe answer was to acknowledge their pain and create a space to grieve.\u201d<\/p>\n Though Boyo\u2019s work is always supported by data, he refuses to lose the human element behind those numbers in both the populations he serves and in the staff that supports him in the work. \u201cI feel like I discovered my life\u2019s meaning when I discovered public health,\u201d says Boyo.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause, for me, making an impact on a population became sacred. Every policy I\u2019ve ever implemented or deployed, every clinic or hospital I\u2019ve ever run, I\u2019ve tried to improve access and support the population being served,\u201d he says. \u201cThese are people with lives and jobs and families. They have never been numbers to me.<\/p>\n Illustration: Nazario Graziano<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When COVID-19 took hold, our world changed. So, too, did the operations of every industry. Here\u2019s how three alumni embraced the challenges and brought bright ideas to dark times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":11857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11856"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11882,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11856\/revisions\/11882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}