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“We don't know what will happen to the scientific system, where the cut will be and what projects will be invested in. “It is a very complicated moment.” The Argentine immunologist Juliana Cassataro (49 years old, La Plata) crudely describes the uncertainty due to the budget adjustment announced by the far-right Javier Milei. The researcher, who as a child played with microscopes, read books about insects and marveled at Jacques Cousteau, is in charge of one of the local developments that has focused the most attention in the last four years: the Argentine vaccine against covid-19 that, According to him, it will be available in the coming days and will allow the country to have its own inoculant to attack future variants of the coronavirus and to apply as a booster this year and in the coming years.
The vaccine was developed jointly between the State – through the former Ministry of Science, UNSAM and Conicet – and the Cassará laboratory, which financed phase 1 of clinical research and all stages of scaling and production under good manufacturing practices. . Cassataro remembers when, in the middle of the strict quarantine period, she was called to participate in the “Project Ideas” initiative. “We knew that this subsidy would not be enough, but it would allow us to make prototypes and then find a private company that would be interested in producing it.” Almost four years later and after the work of hundreds of people, the inoculant is a fact: “We have the capacity to adapt the vaccine to the variants circulating in Argentina and the region,” he says. “I want people to apply it so that what we did is used. May all the economic effort, time, investment and resources have an end. What I want most is to go and get the vaccine myself. The wait is long,” he jokes.
The development of the Arvac Cecilia Grierson vaccine, named in honor of the first Argentine doctor and fighter for women's rights, earned Cassataro the prestigious award For women in scienceawarded by L'Oréal-Unesco, at the end of 2023. “Argentina needs long-term policies to continue with research, development and production processes, independently of the Governments,” says the scientist from the Biotechnical Research Institute of the National Council of Scientific and Technical (Conicet) and professor at the National University of San Martín (UNSAM), in an interview with América Futura.
Ask. Why is it important now that the country now has its own vaccine against the coronavirus?
Answer. It is important for Argentina and the region, as is the case with other vaccines, especially because it is a country with economic and distribution problems. The vaccine-producing countries are the ones that were able to give it to their populations the fastest. It is also important because if a variant changes, you can adapt very quickly. Furthermore, due to cost issues: it does not require spending dollars, it can be produced here generating employment, whether public-private or private. It is sovereignty, economy, work, development and production. The pandemic showed that countries want to have their own development capabilities. For this it is important to have the ability to investigate.
Q. How is a vaccine made?
R. First you have to find the region of the pathogen that would be used in the vaccine formula to direct the immune response against that part. Unfortunately, until the vaccine formula is tested, it is not possible to predict the response in advance, so it has to be evaluated in animals, but then there comes a point where it has to be studied in humans. There is a preclinical study in animals, with models, where different formulas are applied to demonstrate the immune response. We chose a type of subunit vaccine technology and recombinant proteins for which production plants already existed in Argentina. The Argentine vaccine does not need a cold chain, it can be left in the refrigerator. The production method and cost are key in such a large country, where there are all types of climates and not all places can have refrigeration of 70 degrees below zero as needed for RNA vaccines.
Q. We are in the laboratory of a public university. The rector of this house of higher education has said that it would be unfeasible to sustain this university in a few months due to the budgetary adjustment proposed by the Government, something that is replicated in other universities in the country. How do you observe it?
R. If they want to have developed countries as a model, they must invest in education, science and technology. I am not inventing gunpowder, it has been proven in the world, there are the most varied models: China, Israel, the United States or Germany. Science in all cases begins financed by the States, it is not the private ones that begin to develop. As a self-critic, I believe that we must work much more to disseminate our work so that people can see it and get closer to working together with the productive sector and providing tools to current problems. It cannot be just us who defend ourselves, other actors in society must propose that it is important for Argentina to have its own science and technology.
Q. Would an investigation like yours be unfeasible without support from the State?
R. Yes, here and anywhere. All the technologies we use for the development of vaccines began and were developed by the Ministries of Defense, Health and Science of the countries. Many of the vaccines we give ourselves in the annual calendar were developed by the defense ministries of the United States and Russia. And the case of covid-19 was exactly that, all vaccines were financed by their states.
Q. You studied at a time when the Argentine Government sent scientists to “wash the dishes.” How do you experience the budget cut today?
R. We are plagued by uncertainty, we don't know what is going to happen, no one tells us where there will be cuts, what will happen to the scientific system. We all wonder what will happen to what we did, what we worked on, what we are going to apply it to. We are in a very complicated moment. I spent my entire career in public education and the educational quality and highly qualified human resources differentiate us as a country in the region. It's incredible, losing this is very difficult.
Q. Why did you study biology?
R. In high school I had very good biology teachers and I always liked questions about nature: I read books about insects and I loved microscopes. Those of my generation watched Jacques Cousteau, I was fascinated. In Mar del Plata there was no medicine. If she had existed, maybe I would have followed her.
Q. What does having been awarded the L'Oreal UNESCO Prize mean for your professional career?
R. The development of the vaccine was the project that transformed me the most. This project was the dream of our lives, of all of us who work here. We always work for longer-term projects with international collaborations and having worked for something from here, with people from here, with Argentine doctors, with the national indus
try, was a dream. Before I saw that Argentina had good human resources in science and technology, excellent clinical doctors and a good pharmaceutical industry, but there was no union from beginning to end. You could always do part of it, but not all of it.
Q. A few months ago she stated that there are many women doing science: 80% in biological areas, but few who reach positions of hierarchy. What view does she have on the role of women in science?
R. I don't know if it has to do with the education I had, but I don't like places of power, I like to lead a particular project, something specific. I never imagined a place of power just because of the place, it is a fundamental difference compared to men. That's tremendous. I think it is a problem of education and having few examples, but we have the capabilities.
Q. But there is an obvious glass ceiling.
R. Clear. I don't know what the explanation is for why it's so hard for us to get to those places. Sometimes it is not that they give them to us, but also wanting to have them in the form of leadership that we know.
Q. The last decades of your life were dedicated to science. How do you imagine the next ten years?
R. I imagined that in 2024 I would do new projects focused on things necessary for the country, thinking about a project from scratch to completion, initiatives that serve to solve specific problems in Argentina or the region. It could be other types of vaccines, there are many needs, both human and veterinary. We have human resources, but now we do not know what the priority lines will be or what projects will be invested in.
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