Shelly Krebs grew up on a dairy farm between Browntown and South Wayne that her parents, Roger and Diana Krebs, operated for 43 years. During her time at Black Hawk High School, she was the FFA president, showed vegetables at the county fair and was highly involved in sports as a Black Hawk Warrior.
Now she’s on the frontlines of COVID-19 vaccine research at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, and working for Operation Warp Speed to develop vaccines faster than ever in history to bring an end to the coronavirus pandemic.
After graduating from Black Hawk, she went on to Bradley University for a degree in biochemistry, then attended Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire for her Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology.
Her vaccine research has taken her as far as India and Liberia. During a postdoctoral fellowship with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association of Public Health Laboratories, she researched vaccination strategies against HIV.
She now leads a research group at Walter Reed to develop vaccines and therapies for infectious diseases, including HIV, Zika and now SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Her team is developing a vaccine that began Phase 1 trials this month — so it is different from the Pfizer vaccine that shipped to hospitals beginning Dec. 14.
Krebs’ lab focuses on B cells, or the cells that secrete antibodies that provide protection from infection. In addition to vaccine development, her lab isolates these antibodies so they can be used as treatment to blunt disease severity in those infected with COVID-19.
Four types of COVID-19 vaccine are under development.
The first, which is the platform for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, utilizes messenger RNA to show cells how to make a protein that initiates an immune response to SARS-CoV-2. It can be developed quickly due to technical advancements in recent years, Krebs said. This type of vaccine requires two doses, several weeks apart.
Krebs is telling her friends and family to get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, which have successfully completed their Phase 3 trials in over 60,000 people and received FDA emergency-use authorization. She also plans to get vaccinated with either vaccine, and her husband, a physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital, is scheduled to be vaccinated in the next few weeks.
“Get vaccinated. It’s definitely worth it,” she said, adding that it’s the only way to be protected from severe COVID-19 disease. Further, she said, the mRNA vaccines are not infectious, cannot produce the virus and do not combine with your own DNA, contrary to false theories online.
The second vaccine platform uses viral vectors and has the benefit of requiring only one dose. This vaccine is in Phase 3 clinical trials. A third type uses deactivated SARS-CoV-2 but is not under development in the U.S. This strategy is behind the vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella, but it takes a long time to develop.
The fourth platform uses virus-like particles that look like viruses but are not viruses, triggering an immune system response in the body. This is the vaccine platform Krebs is developing at Walter Reed.
“Even though it appears that we moved very fast towards developing a vaccine, we’ve been developing these new vaccine platforms for the past 20 years in multiple clinical trials. This isn’t our first rodeo. We were able to move quickly because we had the pieces already in place ready for a pandemic of this scale,” Krebs said.
In a phone call earlier this fall, she talked about her work, growing up in Wisconsin and her advice for getting vaccinated. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity and space.
How do you speed up vaccine development under the emergency circumstances we’re in?
They’re calling it Operation Warp Speed, and unless you’re a Star Trek fan, you may not (get the reference). But really, they’re not skipping any steps in the entire trial or the safety or the production of these vaccines. The reason it’s going at warp speed is because the U.S. government put in billions and billions of dollars to produce these vaccines, (without knowing) the results of Phase 3 trials. If the Phase 3 trials work, that means the investment into producing those vaccines will have paid off... and the vaccine will be ready right away after that safety trial is done.
How soon will the vaccine your team is working on be ready?
We probably won’t have that vaccine completed in the Phase 3 trials until next summer, but we’re taking a different strategy. What we’re looking at is really just step one to get to a point where we have a coronavirus vaccine that not only protects against this current coronavirus but also can protect us against future potential coronavirus outbreaks. We know that these other companies are moving forward very rapidly right now with these other vaccines, and those responses are looking great. We’re taking an approach of, OK, let’s now think about the future. Let’s think about how we can protect ourselves not just against this pandemic but future pandemics so we don’t have to worry about coronaviruses ever again.
So would this vaccine work against the common cold (another coronavirus)?
Exactly. Can you imagine if we could protect ourselves against the common cold every year? That would be nice.
In general, should we be prepared for another type of viral outbreak soon?
I joined Walter Reed in 2012. In 2014 and 2015, there was an Ebola outbreak in Africa. Then in 2016/2017, there was a Zika outbreak. And now in 2020, we have a SARS-COV-2 outbreak. So these outbreaks are coming every two to three years. I think we’re always going to have to be on our toes to make sure that instead of reacting to an outbreak, as we’re doing right now, maybe we can predict the next outbreak and be ready for it.
The whole purpose of vaccination is so we can reopen up, we can go back to something that looks like normal. That’s the end goal, that we don’t have to worry about this in our lives.
What has been the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on you personally?
My heart is always in Wisconsin, so the moment this outbreak happened, I immediately started thinking about my friends and my family back home. The first thought I had was, oh no, this virus really impacts elderly populations and we have such a strong elderly population living in that area. I was so concerned about how hard it would hit our area in particular. So initially when I saw the numbers rising in China, and I saw what was happening around the world, I immediately started calling friends and family. I said, “Start stocking up on supplies, start getting masks.”
For me and for my family, it’s really been impactful. I have three children, they’re 8, 5 and 3. So I have two children that are 100% virtual learning. ... It’s really hard to see children have to go through this. I am working 40 to 60 hours a week. When the outbreak first happened, I didn’t take a day off for over three months. I think I clocked 92 days straight. My husband is a physician at Johns Hopkins so he obviously is a frontline worker. ... It’s been really difficult to balance life, family and work at the same time. I know lots of families are feeling this right now. (My husband will) get up at four or five in the morning and work until 2 and then I’ll work from 2 until 10 on a daily basis and then I work every weekend. ... so we’re very much looking forward to a vaccine so we can get back to life as we know it.
Are you working virtually or in a lab?
A combination of both. I’m on call on a daily basis. There’s no weekends anymore for people who are working on a vaccine or for a treatment. ... I take meetings from home virtually, sometimes with my kids behind me.
What are you learning in your SARS-CoV-2 research that you think the general population should know?
I would say the biggest thing that people should be aware of is that it is transmitted by aerosol droplets, and so what that means is if a person wears a mask, they have a much lower risk of transmitting that virus to others. It’s a very low risk. Masks save lives, there’s no other way around it.
Some people have asked me in the past, “How about I just get the virus? I’m young, so I’ll just get the sniffles and I’ll be fine. I’ll get it over with and I’ll be protected.” This is not a good idea. First, we don’t know who’s going to get severe disease or not. We do know that people with underlying health conditions and elderly people have an increased risk of disease severity. But that does not mean that healthy people are not at risk of getting severe disease. There’s lots of very healthy people who’ve gotten COVID who are in the hospital right now. Two, even if you were to get infected and you were asymptomatic, you’re probably only going to be immune for a month or two. The durability of that immune response is very short in people who have mild symptoms or who are asymptomatic. So it’s not worth getting infected. And then three, we know that if people do get it, there’s a 90 to 95% chance they’re going to spread it, and that’s just going to overwhelm our healthcare system. So there’s absolutely no logical reason to try to get infected.
Those of us not in the medical field are learning so much right now about public health and how it’s not so much about individual choice, it’s about community response.
Exactly. I get my yearly flu vaccine not because, honestly, I’m trying to protect myself. I get my yearly flu vaccine because I’m thinking about others around me, especially those who cannot get vaccinated, do not respond well to vaccines or have a depleted immune system due to cancer treatments. It’s about protecting others in the community. It’s the same for masks. You protect others in the community, not just yourself.
Why did you decide to get into this career?
I grew up on a dairy farm so I’ve always been amazed that something so small like bacteria can bring down a large animal like a cow. So for me, my interest in germs happened really early on in my life, probably I’d say in middle school. I really wanted to go and learn and understand science and be a virus hunter and save people’s lives through vaccination. At Black Hawk, there were some pivotal teachers I had. One of them was Mr. Richard Meske, who was my agriculture teacher. He was also my FFA advisor. He was always, always encouraging me. It really pushed me to do the very best I could and work as hard as I could.
In the midst of this COVID-19 surge, what reasons for hope do you see?
There are scientists working crazy hours, night and day, round the clock, trying to move as quickly as possible so we have vaccines and treatments available this upcoming winter. ... We are going to get back to normal again through vaccination. I do have a lot of hope for the future or I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing.
