Paula Alves talks about vaccines in “Sociedade Civil” | RTP2

[Click here to read the original article and watch the interview]

Paula Alves, CEO of iBET, was invited to join the pannel of experts talking about viruses and vaccines in the national TV show “Sociedade Civil“, aired on RTP 2.

In this episode, Paula Alves CEO of iBET, Pedro Simas (iMM – Instituto de Medicina Molecular) and Inês Oliveira (Ciência Viva) discussed several aspects of “Virology”, such as:

• the definition of virus and the history of virus research;
• vaccine development and virus-based therapeutics;
• how societal behaviour is crucial to control COVID-19 pandemics and to minimize associated health risks;
• the importance of fundamental virology for epidemiologic studies;
• the major impact of vaccines on public human health;

Selected Paula's quotes:

• “Multidisciplinary teams are essential to develop a vaccine, from discovery to distribution!” 
• “The only scientific breakthrough that had more impact in human health than vaccines was the achievement of tools for the purification of drinking water”
• “Based on accumulated knowledge of diseases, we have oriented our research towards more rational vaccine development”
• “Advances in recombinant DNA technologies and virology enables biotechnologists to take advantage of viruses natural abilities and tranform then into powerful therapeutic tools”
• “I am an optimist. The diversity of technologies and platforms used in vaccine candidates currently in clinical trials boost my confidence that we will find an effective vaccine”
• “iBET and GenIbet are involved in producing batches [of vaccines] for clinical trials. While conducting these clinical trials, we are also thinking in how to increase the production scale”