Ileana Morales Suárez MD MS July–October 2022, Vol 24, No 3–4
It was just before New Year’s Eve, 2019 when an emerging virus in China caught the attention of Dr Ileana Morales, director of Science and Technological Innovation in Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health. She had already participated in implementing Cuban protocols to prevent Ebola and address diseases such as Zika and dengue. But this was […]
As 2021 drew to a close, Cuba struggled to contain the highly transmissible omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, braced for a new wave of infections and kept a close eye on other variants of concern popping up around the world—a common experience to countries everywhere as we head into the second year of the pandemic. In Cuba, however, there is one marked difference making all the difference: by early January, 87% of the population was fully vaccinated using a three-dose schedule of vaccines developed and produced on the island.[1] This massive vaccination campaign is complemented by a rapid booster rollout—also using Cuban vaccines—that began in December 2021 and was ongoing as we finalized this issue.
The island nation was able to achieve the third highest COVID-19 vaccination rate in the world[2] after decades of scientific investment, research, discovery and innovation; regulatory oversight and compliance; professional training; and increased production capacity. But a vaccine is only as effective as the health system charged with administering it—in a safe and timely manner, to as many people as possible. Here too, Cuba has decades of experience, including a national pediatric immunization program where 98% of children under 5 are immunized against 13 diseases,[3] an annual polio vaccination campaign (both launched in 1962 and uninterrupted since) and campaigns to contain epidemics such as H1N1.
When the first COVID-19 cases were detected on the island in March 2020, Cuba harnessed this vaccine experience, making a hard tack towards developing its own vaccines. Two of the main protagonists in the country’s biotechnology development, the Finlay Vaccine Institute (IFV) and the Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center (CIGB), both with several groundbreaking preventive and therapeutic vaccines in their portfolios, led the search for a vaccine. Today, Cuba has three vaccines authorized for emergency use—Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus developed by IFV, and Abdala, developed by CIGB. Schedules with these vaccines have demonstrated more than 90% efficacy in clinical trials,[4] and after regulatory approval for emergency use, became the backbone of Cuban COVID-19 vaccination efforts. A fourth vaccine, Mambisa (CIGB), administered nasally, and a fifth, Soberana 01 (IFV) are still in clinical trials.
For this installment in MEDICC Review’s series spotlighting leading women of Cuban science, we sat down with Dr Verena Muzio, Director of Clinical Research at CIGB. A pioneer of Cuba’s biotechnology sector, she is an immunologist with a doctorate in biological sciences. Her professional trajectory began researching the genetically engineered hepatitis B surface antigen that led to the development of Cuba’s recombinant hepatitis B vaccine in 1989. The same technological platform used in this vaccine was used to develop CIGB’s Abdala vaccine against SARS-CoV-2—part of the reason Cuba was able to secure a vaccine so quickly. A phase 3 clinical trial determined a 92.28% efficacy rate for Abdala, with results to appear in forthcoming publications.
At the time of this writing, more than 10 million Cubans (nearly 90% of the country’s population), had received at least their first dose of Soberana 02 or Abdala, two of five vaccine candidates for SARS-CoV-2 developed and produced on the island. Late-phase clinical trial data revealed that Abdala is 92.28% effective after the full, […]
The effects and implications of COVID-19 are global, comprehensive and long-term. The pandemic has exposed inequities, the fragility of economic and political systems, and in many cases, skewed priorities. Population health, not to mention planetary health, is suffering as a result. Nevertheless, the global health crisis in which we are embroiled has provided opportunities for […]
Three fourths of the 175 staff at Cuba’s National Medical Genetics Center (CNGM) are women. And women constitute 90% of the research team working on the Center’s largest current project—unlocking the biological secrets of COVID-19 in the Cuban population. They are identifying particularly vulnerable groups and geographies, reviewing therapies applied and long-term sequelae of the […]
On August 13, 2020, Cuba’s national regulatory agency, the Center for Quality Control of Medicines, Equipment and Medical Devices (CECMED), authorized clinical trials for SOBERANA 01—Cuba’s first vaccine candidate and the first from Latin America and the Caribbean. On August 24, parallel Phase I/II double blind, randomized, controlled clinical trials were launched at clinical sites […]
Science journalism was little known in Cuba when Iramis Alonso wrote her thesis on the specialized field in 1990. That year, journalism degree from the University of Havana in hand, she set off to Cuba’s eastern countryside to complete two years of social service reporting for local, regional and national print media. Living in the […]
She was a country girl from the northeastern Cuban province of Holguín, her father a farmer, her mother a teacher. Fast forward a few decades: Dr Lilliam Álvarez mastered mathematics, physics and nuclear science, finally specializing in numeric solutions to differential equations. She spent 20 years at the Cybernetics and Physics Institute in Havana, half that time as deputy director. For another eight years, she served as director of science in the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment. Full professor and senior researcher at the University of Havana, she is a member of the national academic authority that awards doctoral degrees in math and is Cuba´s ambassador to the International Mathematical Union. In 2000, she was inducted into the Caribbean Academy of Sciences, and in 2008, was elected a full member of the Third World Academy of Science (now The World Academy of Sciences).
But over time, her rich bibliography, with titles the likes of A numerical technique to solve linear and non-linear singularly perturbed problems began to be peppered with other provocative gender-informed work: Women doing hard sciences in the Caribbean, Are Women Good for Math? and her 2011 book Ser mujer científica o morir en el intento (Be a Woman Scientist or Die Trying). Her focus on women in science—and their rights to belong in its leadership as well as its ranks—is also reflected in her activist approach internationally and in Cuba.
She is a member of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World and heads its Cuban chapter. After her designation as a Distinguished Member of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, she was elected Secretary in 2010 and also chairs its Commission on Women in Science.
The Cuban Academy of Sciences was the right place to hear her story and to explore the way she sees women scientists in today’s Cuba—and the country she would like to see in the future.
Conner Gorry MA
The 1980s were a watershed for Cuban research in medicine and health: significant financing and material resources buttressed a strategy to improve population health through enhanced biopharmaceutical innovation and clinical best practices applied to Cuba’s universal public health system. Redirecting research priorities and providing substantial public funding to tackle the top population health problems was a radical idea at the time, especially for a developing country like Cuba. Doing so has become a hallmark of Cuba’s scientific achievements and approach ever since. Among the institutions exemplifying this strategy is the Pedro Kourí Tropical Medicine Institute (IPK). Founded in 1937 with a research mission dedicated to parasitology and transmission of known tropical diseases, it wasn’t until the late Dr Gustavo Kourí Flores was appointed director in 1979 that IPK’s core objectives and facilities were expanded to include a comprehensive teaching component, a state-of-the-art clinical hospital to treat tropical and other communicable diseases, and an international collaboration strategy to facilitate knowledge and technology transfer.
Today, IPK is Cuba’s national reference center for diagnosis, treatment, control and prevention of communicable diseases and is a regional leader in applied research into so-called neglected diseases—usually diseases of the poor. With departments of parasitology, bacteriology, virology, pharmacology and more, it’s a magnet for some of the country’s most accomplished scientists—most of them women—and a major contributor to Cuba’s portfolio of scientific products, research and publishing.
This interview with virologist Dr María Guadalupe Guzmán, director of IPK’s Reference Center for Research and Diagnosis, is the third in MEDICC Review’s series on outstanding Cuban women in science and medicine. Recognized as a leading expert in dengue research, Dr Guzmán is also director of the WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center for Dengue and its Control and was president of the Arbovirus Diagnosis Laboratory Network of the Americas (RELDA) from 2010 through 2018. Currently, she is president of the Cuban Society of Microbiology and Parasitology, directs IPK’s Scientific Council that sets the Institute’s research priorities, and is a distinguished professor and author. In 2016, she published Dengue (Editorial Ciencias Médicas, Havana), the most comprehensive collection of original Cuban research available on the topic.
