Vejon Health host the first live discussion between two Covid-19 giants in virology and vaccinology science: Geert Vanden Bossche and Robert Malone, MD.

Geert Vanden Bossche received his DVM from the University of Ghent, Belgium, and his PhD degree in Virology from the University of Hohenheim, Germany. He held adjunct faculty appointments at universities in Belgium and Germany. After his career in Academia, Geert joined several vaccine companies (GSK Biologicals, Novartis Vaccines, Solvay Biologicals) to serve various roles in vaccine R&D as well as in late vaccine development. Geert then moved on to join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Discovery team in Seattle (USA) as Senior Program Officer; he then worked with the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) in Geneva as Senior Ebola Program Manager. At GAVI he tracked efforts to develop an Ebola vaccine. He also represented GAVI in fora with other partners, including WHO, to review progress on the fight against Ebola and to build plans for global pandemic preparedness. Back in 2015, Geert scrutinized and questioned the safety of the Ebola vaccine that was used in ring vaccination trials conducted by WHO in Guinea. His critical scientific analysis and report on the data published by WHO in the Lancet in 2015 was sent to all international health and regulatory authorities involved in the Ebola vaccination program. After working for GAVI, Geert joined the German Center for Infection Research in Cologne as Head of the Vaccine Development Office. He is at present primarily serving as a Biotech/ Vaccine consultant while also conducting his own research on Natural Killer cell-based vaccines.

Robert W. Malone, M.D., M.S. is the discoverer of in-vitro and in-vivo RNA transfection and the inventor of mRNA vaccines, while he was at the Salk Institute in 1988. His research was continued at Vical in 1989, where the first in-vivo mammalian experiments were designed by him. The mRNA, constructs, reagents were developed at the Salk institute and Vical by Dr. Malone. The initial patent disclosures were written by Dr. Malone in 1988-1989. Dr. Malone was also an inventor of DNA vaccines in 1988 and 1989. This work results in over 10 patents and numerous publications, yielding about 7000 citations for this work. Dr. Malone was also an inventor of DNA vaccines in 1988 and 1989. Dr. Malone specializes in clinical research, medical affairs, regulatory affairs, project management, proposal management (large grants and contracts), vaccines and biodefense. This includes writing, developing, reviewing and managing vaccine, bio-threat and biologics clinical trials and clinical development strategies. He has been involved in developing, designing, and providing oversight of approximately forty phase 1 clinical trials and twenty phase 2 clinical trials, as well as five phase 3 clinical trials. He has served as medical director/medical monitor on approximately forty phase 1 clinical trials, and on twenty phase 2 clinical trials, including those run at vaccine-focused Clinical Research Organizations. He received his medical training at Northwestern University (MD) and Harvard University (Clinical Research Post Graduate) medical school, and in Pathology at UC Davis.