Black History Month - Dr. Kizzy Corbett
Black History Month - Dr. Kizzy Corbett
With the world in the grip of a deadly pandemic, it was a black woman that has played a key role in the discovery and implementation of an effective vaccine against Covid-19. 35-year old Kizzmekia "Kizzy" Shanta Corbett is a viral immunologist at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health.
Appointed to the VRC in 2014, she is currently the scientific lead of the VRC's Coronavirus Team, with research efforts aimed at propelling novel coronavirus vaccines, including a COVID-19 vaccine. In December 2020, the Institute's Director Anthony Fauci said: "Kizzy is an African American scientist who is right at the forefront of the development of the vaccine."
Recognized as a gifted and talented student, she was recommended for Project SEED, a program for gifted minorities that allowed her to study chemistry in labs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a 10th-grader. She accepted a scholarship for minority science students that paid her way through the University of Maryland Baltimore County and introduced her to NIH.
At NIH, Corbett was not shy about her ambition. During a summer internship there, Barney Graham, who ran the Vaccine Research Center, asked her what she wanted to achieve in life.
“She said, ‘I want your job,’” Graham recalled "From the very beginning, she was really pretty bold in her aspirations.”
Always outspoken she was an early critic of the make-up of the Trump pandemic response group. Corbett posted a tweet that lamented the lack of diversity on President Trump’s coronavirus task force: “The task force is largely people (white men) he appointed to their positions as director of blah blah institute. They are indebted to serve him NOT the people.”
And, as public health officials were reporting startling data that showed that the virus was disproportionately killing African Americans, Corbett vented on Twitter. “I tweet for the people who will die when doctors has to choose who gets the last ventilator and ultimately … who lives,”
A viral immunologist by training, Dr. Corbett used her expertise to propel novel vaccine development for pandemic preparedness. Appointed to the VRC in 2014, her work focused on developing novel coronavirus vaccines, including mRNA-1273, a leading candidate vaccine against the virus that causes COVID-19. In response to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, the vaccine concept incorporated in mRNA-1273 was designed by Dr. Corbett’s team from viral sequence data and rapidly deployed to industry partner, Moderna, Inc., for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approval. It is now one of only two vaccines approved for use in the USA. I received my first dose of Moderna's vaccine last week and appreciate Dr. Corbett's work!
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease doctor and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed the African American community’s fears of accepting the new coronavirus vaccine.
“To my African American brothers and sisters … this vaccine that you’re gonna be taking was developed by an African American woman. And that is just a fact,” Fauci proclaimed during a recent National Urban League event.