AAAS, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, recognizes, inspires, and enables a robust research ecosystem that drives discovery and innovation. 522 Productions partnered with AAAS interviewing two researchers that pioneered the pathway for the COVID vaccine almost 20 years before the pandemic. The work of Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman enabled the viability of the mRNA platforms and pushed the boundaries of research. Karikó teamed with Weissman to document the body’s acute inflammatory immune response to mRNA – and then altered the molecular code to avoid that immune response. Today, mRNA serves as the basis for the first two COVID-19 vaccines approved in the United States.