WARP SPEED WAS DECADES:

A less obvious, but arguably far more consequential DARPA pursuit over the past two decades comes by way of biotech: specifically vaccine development and therapeutics. Though many others have claimed responsibility for the recent surge in RNA vaccines used to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, DARPA director Tompkins said many of the pivotal early advancements within that space emerged from the agency's ADEPT project. That project was originally intended as a vehicle for rapid vaccine development and therapeutics for overseas military forces but quickly evolved to uses on a much larger scale, mirroring a familiar DARPA trajectory.

DARPA-funded RNA projects at Moderna resulted in the first Phase 1 clinical trial proving RNA could deliver antibodies to protect against viruses. That original proposal involved using RNA to encode things other than just vaccine antigens, but around a decade later the pandemic made that specific use case extremely urgent.

Gizmodo spoke with Doctor Amy Jenkins, a program manager in DARPA's Biological Technologies Office (BTO) to discuss the ways the agency's early biotech investments influenced the pandemic's course. Like autonomous vehicle research before it, Jenkins said the agency's interest in RNA research was specifically tied to use cases within the military, though potential civilian applications clearly seemed within the realm of possibility.

"What's good for the DoD, which are by and large healthy 18- to 30-year-olds is gonna be good for the general population as well," Jenkins said. "We always knew there could be civilian applications and encouraged that with the groups that we funded."

And while DARPA's ADEPT program was developed with the explicit thought of a pandemic in mind, Jenkins said the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic and its destructive reality still came as a shock.

Though DARPA ceased funding RNA vaccine research years prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Jenkins said it was still actively funding work with Moderna looking into monoclonal antibodies. Unlike vaccines that take time to set in, monoclonal antibodies at their best can start preventing disease immediately following an injection. Funding for that project aimed to protect soldiers in the intervening time it takes vaccines to fully kick in but has already led to multiple commercial pharmaceutical products that are available to civilians.

When asked about the outright rejection of the RNA vaccines by some on the political right and broader criticism against companies like Moderna making eye-watering profits after receiving funding from the U.S. government, Jenkins responded by arguing expensive new technologies like RNA may not have been possible without government agencies jumping in to fill a gap left in the pharmaceutical market. This is a common argument made by pharmaceutical companies themselves and there's plenty of reason to be skeptical of it.

"No company gets rich off of an infectious disease threat," Jenkins said. "Large pharma and many of them are shutting down their infectious disease divisions because it is just not profitable." We have seen scattered long-term R&D shutdowns in the pharma industry but the operating principle is a "threat" isn't going to be very profitable unless it... uh, you know, becomes a global pandemic. In that case: jackpot! Until then, public money is a big help.

"If we want to have these capabilities that allow the U.S. to have access to the life-saving drugs when the time comes then I think it does require government funding to make sure that these technologies are being developed."

The question of whether that funding should go to a for-profit company remains up for debate, but DARPA is pretty firmly in the "public-private partnership" camp.

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