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6 Pharmaceutical Technology ® The Real Message Behind Commercial mRNA Products April eBook 2023 PharmTech.com MYLISA - STOCK.ADOBE.COM W orld leaders have set ambitious goals to respond more swiftly to the next pandemic, including the United States' goal to design, test, and review a new vaccine just 100 days after a pandemic declaration and to produce enough vaccines for the US and the world in 130 and 200 days. Past preparedness ef- forts have focused on innovation and reliability— culminating in the novel mRNA vaccines. Today, it's important to consider diverse responses—and how the industry can make investments sustainable and "ready" for when an emergency happens. As background to the emergence of COVID-19, re- searchers have long sought estimates of the many and varied natural microbial threats nature throws in our path. In 2013, Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, collected 1897 samples from f lying fox and identified 55 viruses in nine viral families. "Of these, on ly f ive were prev iously k now n, including t wo human bocaviruses, an avian adenovirus, a human/ bovine betacoronavirus, and an avian gammacoro- navirus. Another 50 were newly discovered" (1). It wa s f u r t her est i mated t hat "t here were a not her three rare viruses unaccounted for in the samples, upping the estimate of viruses in the f lying fox to 58." Finally, "this number was extrapolated to all 5486 known mammals, yielding a total of at least 320,000 novel viruses" (1). Researchers can disagree with Daszak's methodolog y and f indings, but his work does point out the obvious—there is a lot of po- tential viral threat in our natural environment with even taking into account infectious bacteria, fungi (currently there is a highly concerning Candida auris fungus spreading in US hospitals [2]), protozoa–(ma- laria, amebic dysentery) or helminths, or prions. A previously published article discusses what the au- thor believes needs to be done here about preparing for the next pandemic (3). Learning to Think at Lightspeed Chris Spivey, editorial director Actions combatting the next pandemic must be diverse, reliable, and sustainable.