During the frightening early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020, Kiehl Sundt, of Sequim, Washington, became one of the first people on Earth to receive an experimental dose of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine.
A year later, Sundt rolled up his sleeve again. At Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, he received an injection loaded with live malaria parasites for a clinical trial of a potential vaccine against that global killer.
This month, Sundt was back in a Fred Hutch exam room, receiving a shot of live bacteria — comparatively harmless microbial cousins to human tuberculosis — in a study to help take researchers a step closer toward a better vaccine to stop that scourge.
