Warp Speed Research Articles

Supporting the nation in crisis: the military health system’s role in enhancing public health capacity through public–private partnerships

BackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused significant global disruptions to the healthcare system, which was forced to make rapid changes in healthcare delivery. The pandemic necessitated closer collaboration between the US civilian healthcare sector and the military health system (MHS), resulting in new and strengthened partnerships that can ultimately benefit public health and healthcare for the nation. In this study, we sought to understand the full range of partnerships in which the MHS engaged with the civilian sector during the COVID-19 pandemic and to elicit lessons for the future.MethodsWe conducted key informant interviews with MHS policymakers and advisers, program managers and providers who were affiliated with the MHS from March 2020 through December 2022. Key themes were derived using thematic analysis and open coding methods.ResultsWe conducted 28 interviews between December 2022 and March 2023. During the pandemic, the MHS collaborated with federal and local healthcare authorities and private sector entities through endeavours such as Operation Warp Speed. Lessons and recommendations for future pandemics were also identified, including investment in biosurveillance systems and integration of behavioural and social sciences.ConclusionsThe MHS rapidly established and fostered key partnerships with the public and private sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic experience showed that while the MHS is a useful resource for the nation, it also benefits from partnering with a variety of organizations, agencies and private companies. Continuing to develop these partnerships will be crucial for coordinated, effective responses to future pandemics.

Operation warp speed: Harbinger of American industrial innovation policies

Abstract Operation warp speed (OWS) was a crash effort from 2020 to 2021 to undertake the late-stage development, production, and distribution of vaccines for the coronavirus pandemic. The vaccines were developed, approved, and available in a record time of 8 months using an industrial policy approach. Mainstream economists have long opposed industrial policy approaches as market interference, unless they can be justified by clear market failures. The nation has long had industrial economic policies in such areas as defense, health, transport, and agriculture. However, interventionist policies on the non-defense innovation side of the economy after the research stage have generally been avoided. OWS was a departure, an industrial innovation policy. OWS built a new organization with officials from major health science, regulatory, public health, and research agencies as well as the Defense Department. Elements of its program included: supporting a portfolio of different technology platforms, guaranteed contracts that enable production to evolve alongside development, flexible contracting mechanisms that enabled rapid procurement and intervention into supply chains, rapid technology certification that assured the new vaccines of rapid market entry, mapping supply chains and filling gaps to assure rapid production and distribution, and major product distribution. The elements applied in OWS amount to a new tool kit potentially relevant to other areas, and the USA is now pursuing a series of these in other technology fields.

Enhancing warp sizing effect and quality: a comprehensive review of the squeezing process and future research

Warp sizing significantly influences both the efficiency of weaving machines and the overall quality of the woven fabric, playing a crucial role in the weaving preparation process. Ensuring precise control of process parameters and equipment status during the sizing process is essential to maintain desirable sizing quality. This paper clarified the research significance of squeezing from the perspective of its application in warp sizing. Moreover, research advances in the squeezing device, including the structure, material, surface state of squeezing and sizing rollers, the configuration of the squeeze and sizing rollers, the spraying device, the pressurization methods for the squeezing roller, and their influence on sizing performance were reviewed in detail. A comprehensive analysis and summary were conducted to explore the correlations between sizing quality and diverse squeezing technical parameters, encompassing squeezing force, surface hardness of rubber-covered sizing and the squeezing roller, squeezing width, warp speed, and immersion time. In addition, this article also outlines the mathematical models related to the squeezing process and the characterization methods of the squeezing effect. Finally, it offers a glimpse into potential future research directions concerning the squeezing process.

Innovative translational platforms for rapid developing clinical vaccines against COVID-19 and other infectious disease.

A vaccine is a biological preparation that contains the antigen capable of stimulating the immune system to form the defense against pathogens. Vaccine development often confronts big challenges, including time/energy-consuming, low efficacy, lag to pathogen emergence and mutation, and even safety concern. However, these seem now mostly conquerable through constructing the advanced translational platforms that can make innovative vaccines, sometimes, potentiated with a distinct multifunctional VADS (vaccine adjuvant delivery system), as evidenced by the development of various vaccines against the covid-19 pandemic at warp speed. Particularly, several covid-19 vaccines, such as the viral-vectored vaccines, mRNA vaccines and DNA vaccines, regarded as the innovative ones that are rapidly made via the high technology-based translational platforms. These products have manifested powerful efficacy while showing no unacceptable safety profile in clinics, allowing them to be approved for massive vaccination at also warp speed. Now, the proprietary translational platforms integrated with the state-of-the-art biotechnologies, and even the artificial intelligence (AI), represent an efficient mode for rapid making innovative clinical vaccines against infections, thus increasingly attracting interests of vaccine research and development. Herein, the advanced translational platforms for making innovative vaccines, together with their design principles and immunostimulatory efficacies, are comprehensively elaborated.

Nanotechnology in mRNA Vaccines

The phenomenal success and worldwide acceptance of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 has highlighted one remarkable aspect of these vaccines — the ease of scale-up and the fast manufacturing of the vaccines. The timeline from starting the development (by making the plasmid DNA construct for the spike protein) to FDA Emergency Use authorization was accomplished in less than two years. The reasons for this “Warp Speed” accomplishment are varied, and we will go through each step to highlight where translation was rapid.

Can Operation Warp Speed Serve as a Model for Accelerating Innovations Beyond COVID Vaccines?

Can Operation Warp Speed Serve as a Model for Accelerating Innovations Beyond COVID Vaccines?

SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic-Therapeutics in Warp Speed.

Ever since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic struck, the challenges posed to the scientific community by its causative agent, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have been countless, and still continue to emerge. Even though a host of repurposed and new therapeutic agents as well as vaccines have been, and are being assessed at a breakneck speed, this contagion continues to create havoc, returning back in waves, with appearance of newer viral variants which are associated with numerous challenges, which include greater transmissibility, increased virulence, immune escape, etc. In this study, we discuss the current status of various therapeutic agents which are being used, or in the various stages of preclinical/clinical trials for managing COVID-19.

Preparing for Future Pandemics and Public Health Emergencies: An American College of Physicians Policy Position Paper.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed significant gaps in the United States' pandemic and public health emergency response system. At the federal level, government responses were undercut by a lack of centralized coordination, inadequately defined responsibilities, and an under-resourced national stockpile. Contradictory and unclear guidance throughout the early months of the pandemic, along with inconsistent funding to public health agencies, also created notable variance in state and local responses. The lack of a coordinated response added pressure to an already overwhelmed health care system, which was forced to resort to rationing care and personal protective equipment, creating moral distress and trauma for health care workers and their patients. Despite these severe shortcomings, the COVID-19 pandemic also highlighted successful policies and approaches, such as Operation Warp Speed, which led to the fastest development and distribution of a vaccine in history. In this position paper, the American College of Physicians (ACP) offers several policy recommendations for enhancing federal, state, and local preparedness for future pandemic and public health emergencies. This policy paper builds on various statements produced by ACP throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, including on the ethical distribution of vaccinations and resources, conditions to resume economic and social activity, and efforts to protect the health and well-being of medical professionals, among others.

Climate Finance: An Overview

Climate Finance: An Overview

Synergistic Strategies to Accelerate the Development of Function-Promoting Therapies: Lessons From Operation Warp Speed and Oncology Drug Development.

Functional limitations and physical disabilities associated with aging and chronic disease are major concerns for human societies and expeditious development of function-promoting therapies is a public health priority. Expert panel discussion. The remarkable success of Operation Warp Speed for the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines, COVID-19 therapeutics, and of oncology drug development programs over the past decade have taught us that complex public health problems such as the development of function-promoting therapies will require collaboration among many stakeholders, including academic investigators, the National Institutes of Health, professional societies, patients and patient advocacy organizations, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. There was agreement that the success of well designed, adequately powered clinical trials will require careful definitions of indication/s, study population, and patient-important endpoints that can be reliably measured using validated instruments, commensurate resource allocation, and versatile organizational structures such as those used in Operation Warp Speed.

Maintaining Warp Speed: Policy Requirements for a Just-in-Time, Capability-Based, Scalable Medical Countermeasure Research and Development Enterprise.

Maintaining Warp Speed: Policy Requirements for a Just-in-Time, Capability-Based, Scalable Medical Countermeasure Research and Development Enterprise.

Operations (management) warp speed: Rapid deployment of hospital‐focused predictive/prescriptive analytics for the COVID‐19 pandemic

At the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic, hospitals were in dire need of data‐driven analytics to provide support for critical, expensive, and complex decisions. Yet, the majority of analytics being developed were targeted at state‐ and national‐level policy decisions, with little availability of actionable information to support tactical and operational decision‐making and execution at the hospital level. To fill this gap, we developed a multi‐method framework leveraging a parsimonious design philosophy that allows for rapid deployment of high‐impact predictive and prescriptive analytics in a time‐sensitive, dynamic, data‐limited environment, such as a novel pandemic. The product of this research is a workload prediction and decision support tool to provide mission‐critical, actionable information for individual hospitals. Our framework forecasts time‐varying patient workload and demand for critical resources by integrating disease progression models, tailored to data availability during different stages of the pandemic, with a stochastic network model of patient movements among units within individual hospitals. Both components employ adaptive tuning to account for hospital‐dependent, time‐varying parameters that provide consistently accurate predictions by dynamically learning the impact of latent changes in system dynamics. Our decision support system is designed to be portable and easily implementable across hospital data systems for expeditious expansion and deployment. This work was contextually grounded in close collaboration with IU Health, the largest health system in Indiana, which has 18 hospitals serving over one million residents. Our initial prototype was implemented in April 2020 and has supported managerial decisions, from the operational to the strategic, across multiple functionalities at IU Health.

Building the future of synthetic organ manufacturing and healthcare

Organ reconstruction and manufacturing is a field that aims to create functional organs for transplantation or therapeutic purposes. The development of this field has been driven by rapid advances in various technologies, including three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting, organs-on-chips, organoids, stem cell reprogramming, genome editing and artificial intelligence (AI). Take, for example, the development of organoids and organs-on-chips, which has completely revolutionized the way scientists study organ development, disease progression and drug effects in vitro. 3D bioprinting, which can produce tissues and organs with customized shapes, sizes and functions, has also made it possible to create complex structures with high precision and accuracy, including livers, kidneys, hearts, ears and skin grafts. Bioprinted tissues and organs may soon be used for transplantation on demand in the clinic. Furthermore, manipulation of cell fates and genomes with the latest techniques in reprogramming, genome editing and AI-based computational modelling has allowed us to unlock the hidden potential within human cells and produce new human cell types with new capabilities. Genome editing of patient-derived cells to correct any underlying defects could also ensure that synthetic organs are created with improved functionality and compatibility with the recipient's body. Advancements like these have paved the way for new biomedical applications such as personalized medicine and regenerative therapies. In this special issue on Organ Reconstruction and Manufacturing, we have assembled a corpus of the latest studies that shed light on the cutting-edge progress and challenges in this field. Our special issue highlights the most significant new findings, technologies and therapies that are emerging in this burgeoning field, providing a platform for experts in the field to share their thoughts and predict future trends. The topics covered in this special issue include leading-edge technologies like 3D bioprinting, organs-on-chips and organoids, as well as genetically engineered cells and animals—all of which are critical pieces in the quest for regenerative medicine. If this dream is realized, scientists may well be able to use patient-derived cells to complete drug testing at warp speed, and make it possible to create synthetic organs for transplantation, potentially addressing the shortage of donor organs on a global scale. As we rapidly make technological progress towards this dream, a final piece in the puzzle is the development of ethical guidelines and manufacturing standards to ensure that the production and applications of synthetic organs remain safe, ethical and properly regulated. The creation of synthetic organs raises many ethical questions, including issues related to patient privacy, informed consent and accessibility to healthcare. Therefore it is crucial for us to establish ethical guidelines and manufacturing standards in a collaborative manner, based on multinational and global consensus, to regulate the proper development and use of synthetic organs. We believe our efforts in building such frameworks will help ensure that the benefits of technological breakthroughs in organ reconstruction and manufacturing are maximized, while minimizing potential risks and negative consequences for all of humanity. In conclusion, synthetic organ reconstruction and manufacturing is a rapidly evolving field that has the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry. I believe recent advancements in biotechnology, computational methods, therapeutic applications, ethics and standards will pave the way for a quantum leap in innovation for the field in the near future.

Clinical trial facilitators: A novel approach to support the execution of clinical research at the study site level

In the summer of 2020, multiple efforts were undertaken to establish safe and effective vaccines to combat the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In the United States (U.S.), Operation Warp Speed (OWS) was the program designated to coordinate such efforts. OWS was a partnership between the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the private sector, that aimed to help accelerate control of the COVID-19 pandemic by advancing development, manufacturing, and distribution of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) was identified as a potential collaborator in several large-scale OWS Phase III clinical trial efforts designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of various vaccines that were in development. Given the global importance of these trials, it was recognized that there would be a need for a coordinated, centralized effort within VA to ensure that its medical centers (sites) would be ready and able to efficiently initiate, recruit, and enroll into these trials.The manuscript outlines the partnership and start-up activities led by two key divisions of the VA's Office of Research and Development's clinical research enterprise. These efforts focused on site and enterprise-level requirements for multiple trials, with one trial serving as the most prominently featured of these studies within the VA. As a result, several best practices arose that included designating clinical trial facilitators to study sites to support study initiation activities and successful study enrollment at these locations in an efficient and timely fashion.

The WTO and Vaccine Supply Chain Resilience during a Pandemic

ABSTRACT Cross-border supply chains and international trade enabled the manufacturing and delivery of billions of vaccine doses to inoculate the world against the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). At the same time, the pandemic revealed how the World Trade Organization (WTO) must change to become more useful in the face of a public health emergency. This paper describes the market failures—especially on the supply side—justifying the domestic subsidies and contracting arrangements used to accelerate vaccine research and development and to increase the scale of vaccine production to save lives, livelihoods, and economic activity during a pandemic. It highlights the trade-offs associated with the US subsidies and the priority-rated contracts written for vaccines through the Defense Production Act under Operation Warp Speed. This case study reveals a rich environment in which cross-border supply chains exacerbate input shortages in ways that constrain vaccine production, highlighting the need for the WTO to embrace new forms of international policy coordination for pandemic preparedness and response. As part of a pandemic treaty, the paper proposes a plurilateral agreement on vaccine supply chain resilience that would include novel and enforceable disciplines for export restrictions, provisions to trigger coordinated subsidies across countries to jointly scale up vaccine output and input production capacity, and market surveillance initiatives on supply chain transparency.

Multiband Rabi antenna using nest microstrip add-drop filter (NMADF) for relativistic sensing applications

A microstrip circuit is designed, constructed, and tested based on the nest microstrip add-drop filters (NMADF). The multi-level system oscillation is generated by the wave-particle behaviors of AC driven along the microstrip ring circular path. The continuous successive filtering is applied via the device input port. The higher-order harmonic oscillations can be filtered, from which the two-level system known as a Rabi oscillation is achieved. The outside microstrip ring energy is coupled to the inside rings, from which the multiband Rabi oscillations can be formed within the inner rings. The resonant Rabi frequencies can be applied for multi-sensing probes. The relationship between electron density and Rabi oscillation frequency of each microstrip ring output can be obtained and used for multi-sensing probe applications. The relativistic sensing probe can be obtained by the warp speed electron distribution at the resonant Rabi frequency respecting the resonant ring radii. These are available for relativistic sensing probe usage. The obtained experimental results have shown that there are 3-center Rabi frequencies obtained, which can be used for 3-sensing probes simultaneously. The sensing probe speeds of 1.1c, 1.4c, and 1.5c are obtained using the microstrip ring radii of 14.20, 20.12, and 34.49 mm, respectively. The best sensor sensitivity of 1.30 ms is achieved. The relativistic sensing platform can be used for many applications.

Development of COVID-19 Vaccines—An Unanticipated Moon Shot Achieved at Warp Speed

Alfredo J. Mena Lora, MD; Jessica E. Long, PhD, MPH; Yunda Huang, PhD; Lindsey R. Baden, MD; Hana M. El Sahly, MD; Dean Follmann, PhD; Paul Goepfert, MD; Glenda Gray, MBBCh; Beatriz Grinsztejn, MD; Karen Kotloff, MD; Nadine Rouphael, MD; Magdelena Sobieszczyk, MD, MPH; Stephen R. Walsh, MD; Jessica Andriesen, PhD; Karan A. Shah, MSc; Yuanyuan Zhang, PhD; Peter Gilbert, PhD; Holly Janes, PhD; Cynthia L. Gay, MD, MPH; Ann R. Falsey, MD; Rebecca L. Tripp, MPH; Richard L. Gorman, MD; Tina Tong, DrPH(c), MS; Mary Marovich, MD, DTMH; Kathleen Neuzil, MD, MPH; Lawrence Corey, MD; James G. Kublin, MD, MPH; COVID-19 Prevention Network; Daniel Reirden; Lilly Immergluck; Colleen Kelley; Anna Durbin; Milagritos Tapia; Megan Deming; Karen Kotloff; Jorge Pinto; Paul Goepfert; Zaheer Hoosain; Johan Lombaard; Kathryn Stephenson; Lindsey Baden; Stephen Walsh; Ken Mayer; Pedro Cahn; Marcelo Losso; Isabel Cassetti; Steven Innes; Linda-Gail Bekker; Sheetal Kassim; Catherine Orrel; Graeme Meintjes; Amy Ward; Andreas Diacon; David Wohl; Cindy Gray; Chrinstine Turley; Temitope Oyedele; Babafemi O. Taiwo; Karen Krueger; Rick Novak; Beverly E. Sha; Laura Hammit; Carl Fichtenbaum; David Bernstein; Jeffrey Jacobson; Dima Dandachi; Hasan Naqvi; Susan Koletar; Nadine Rouphael; Sri Edupuganti; Thomas Campbell; Elizabeth Secord; Samantha Siva; Nitesha Jeenarain; Logashvari Naidoo; Nigel Garrett; Nivashnee Naicker; Vimla Naicker; Jayganthie Naidoo; Anamikah Premrajh; Emmanuel Walter; Jeff Henderson; Hugo Tempelman; Abraham Siika; Evan Anderson; Brenda Okech; Richard Rupp; Hana El Sahly; Catherine M. Healy; Robert Arduino; Patricia Winokur; Martin Casapia; Gailen Marshall; Bhagyashri D. Navalkele; Sharla Badel-Faeson; Ian Sanne; Lee Fairlie; Adeodata Kekitiinwa; Patricia Ntege; Peter J. Elyanu; Cissy K. Mutuluuza; Sandra Rwambuya; Philippa Musoke; Deo Wabwire; Barbara Pahud; Mario Castro; Fredrick Sawe; Samuel G. Ouma; Taraz Samandari; Grace Mboya; Craig Innes; Philip Kotze; Javier Lama; Jorge Sanchez; Jorge Gallardo; Pedro Gonzales; Robinson Cabello; Raphael Landovitz; Michael P. Dube; Tamela Gould-Porter; Steve Shoptaw; Jesse Clark; Sheena Kotze; Olivia Kasselman; Katherine Gill; Maphoshane Nchabeleng; Aditya Gaur; Carlos Cabrera; Susanne Doblecki-Lewis; Susan Kline; Scott McClelland; Mandaliya Kishorchandra; Pamela Mda; Thozama Dubula; Walter Jaoko; Spyros Kalams; David Haas; Vladimir Berthaud; Clarence Creech; Sue Ellen Abdalian; Jessica Justman; Delafontaine; Kristen Marks; Sharon Mannheimer; Hong Van Tieu; Magda Sobieszczyk; Mark Mulligan; Vanessa Raabe; Mary Olson; Juanita Erb; Shobha Swaminathan; Jose Pilotto; Christopher Hall; Diana Florescu; Edwin de Jesus; Ian Frank; Katie Barr; Deborah McMahon; Sharon Riddler; Judith M. Martin; Elizabeth Barranco; Breno Santos; Karen Tashima; Beatriz Grinsztejn; Esau J. Filho; Mike Keefer; Ann Falsey; William Brumskine; Stuart Cohen; Jason Okulicz; Barbara Taylor; Thomas Patterson; Ryan Maves; Susan Little; Susan Buchbinder; Annie Luetkemeyer; Carmen Zorrilla; Esper Kallas; Vivian A. Silva; Tamara Newman; Jose Valdez Madruga; Julie McElrath; Lisa Jackson; Anna Wald; Mookho Malahleha; Fatima Laher; Erica Lazarus; Anusha Nana; Daniel Hoft; Sharon Frey; Rachel Presti; Sharon Nachman; Benjamin Luft; Carina Rodriguez; Kathy Mngadi; Eric Daar; Shaun Barnabas; Mark Cotton; Stephen Spector; Karen Servilla; Kathleen A. Linder; Abeer Moana; Carol Kauffman; Mary Bessesen; Rohit Talwani; Louis Dell'Italia; Augusto Alonto; Daniel Liebman; Roger Bedimo; Christopher Woods; Peruvemba Sriram; Kalpana Padala; Gregory Holt; Edwin Swialto; Melanie Jay; Sabrina Felson; Nora Henderson; Sheldon Brown; Saumuel Aguayo; Mark Riddle ; Phyllis Tien; John Toney; Halima Dawood; Disebo Makhaza; Hugh Mighty; Siham Mahgoub; Wes Campbell; David Diemert; Tiffany Schwasinger-Schmidt; Caryn G. Morse; John W. Sanders; John Williamson; Angelique Luabeya; Elizabeth Bukusi; Nelly Mugo; Hannah Kibuuka; Betty Mwesigwe; Andrew Kambugu; Apolo P. Balyegisawa; Kathleen Mullane; Ben Andagalu; Lucas Tina; Nathaniel Copeland; Jack Hutter; Claudio L. de las Casas; Guillermo Ruiz-Palacios; Joseph J. Eron; Judith S. Currier; Myron S. Cohen; Kami Kim; Richard N. Greenberg; Margaret Kasaro; Sinead Delaney-Moretlwe; Rodney Dawson; Carmen Paez; Nicole Grunenberg; William O. Hahn; Huub C. Gelderbloom; Michele P. Andrasik; Stephaun E. Wallace

Warp Speed Price Moves: Jumps after Earnings Announcements

Warp Speed Price Moves: Jumps after Earnings Announcements

Covid-19 vaccine supply chains and the Defense Production Act

Abstract In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the US government used novel policies to accelerate research, development, and production of a diversified portfolio of new vaccines. This article begins by describing the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950 and the initial ‘priority-rated’ contracts agreed to under Operation Warp Speed in 2020 to expedite manufacturing and achieve scale, which succeeded in producing hundreds of millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines by early 2021. However, a puzzle soon emerged, as the scale of US vaccine production was shortly thereafter overtaken by plants in the European Union and India. The paper investigates the trade-offs US policy-makers faced in early 2021—once much of the initial uncertainty about the safety and effectiveness of many Covid-19 vaccines had been resolved—about whether to recalibrate contracts to expand production capacity to help meet global, instead of US, vaccine demand. It also examines the emergence of input shortages and assesses whether both the price constraints implicit in the 2020 DPA contracts and business decisions made to quicken the process of bringing new vaccine plants online globally inadvertently exacerbated them. It also explores the potential need for complementary, input capacity-enhancing policies in the face of highly fragmented, cross-border Covid-19 vaccine supply chains.

Does Prediction Machines Predict Our AI Future? A Review

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence, by artificial intelligence (AI) experts, Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, pulls no punches. AI is all about prediction—machines learning precisely what to do for us and to us. The learning is occurring at warp speed, as AI uses big data to pick our brains for what we know and what we like. The authors are partly infatuated and partly terrified by AI’s parasitic potential. Readers should read this chilling and insightful book, but they should do so with a bottle of scotch, ideally from one of Scotland’s ancient distilleries that has recently been fully automated. (JEL C45, C55, E26, M10, M20, O30)