Deborah Fuller's lab has worked nonstop for months to test vaccine platforms for against SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Jesse Erasmus, senior fellow in the lab, developed what they call an "amplified RNA vaccine." That means it both produces more protein, which leads to a better immune response and it triggers the immune system to be ready to respond.

"I hadn’t ever seen that before with any other candidate nucleic acid vaccine, so that got us very excited and we realized that we may be onto a rapid response vaccine to COVID-19," said Fuller, professor of microbiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.