Dr. Rolando Pajón: From a Modest Town to Vaccine Hero

Rolando Pajón (51) is Cuban and was born in Bauta, extreme northeast of the province of Artemisa, which borders Havana, Cuba. As a child he dreamed of being a scientist in a town surrounded by textile factories, match factories and a prosthetics and dental materials plant. Those who did not work in the factory were dedicated to dairy farming and minor crops.

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Perhaps that is why, for the local people, scientific activity was as far away as the moon from the Earth. Ricardo Pajón, precisely, remembers an anecdote in which the heroine is his grandmother Noelia “Mima” Álvarez.

–At what point in your childhood did you make the scientific click?

–When I was 5 or 6 years old, at school, the teacher asked me: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I told him: “scientist.” This, in a very humble little town, was not an option. And the teacher told me: “That’s not a job. No, no, no… Be a police officer, builder, shoemaker, that (scientist) is not a job.”

Be what you want

Later that day, Roly came home very sad. And Mrs. Mima noticed that something was wrong with her spoiled grandson, whom she raised with great effort with her grandfather Pipo. “She asked me what was wrong with me and I told her that I wanted to be a scientist and that the teacher had told me that that is not a job,” he says and adds: “And my grandmother, who was a small Spanish woman, with a lot of energy, He told me: “Let’s talk to the teacher about that.” We went back to school. They sat me outside, my grandmother went into the teacher’s office, they closed the door, I heard a commotion… (minutes later) the teacher came out and told me: “Roly, you can be whatever you want.”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I told him: scientist. This, in a very humble little town, was not an option. And the teacher told me: “That’s not a job. No no no…”

Rolando Pajón

Years passed and with the effort involved in studying and getting fully involved in scientific life, Dr. Pajón managed to graduate and start working on projects in his field in Cuba. Until 2007, due to the lack of reagents for an antidote that he was developing against meningitis, he traveled to Calgary, Canada.

Long before stepping on the plane, he had already made the decision not to return. Only Mrs. Mima knew about that difficult determination and she did not hesitate to support him.

–He has been working professionally for 27 years. How did she build his scientific career in his native country and how did she make the leap abroad?

–I was born in Cuba, in a very modest town on the outskirts of Havana. He always wanted to be a scientist and he always wanted to be free, even when he didn’t know what freedom was. In 2007 I escaped… The jump was very hard, I left my family behind. I didn’t see my daughters, for example, until almost seven years later. But the jump was also for them… I wanted to give them a free life and opportunity.

–What was the investigation that took you abroad about and how did you make the difficult decision not to return to your country?

–The research I was working on was against bacterial meningitis. But what got me out (of Cuba) was also the human solidarity and professional colleagues who in those initial years opened their doors to my talent and opened the doors of their homes to me.

Certainly, Dr. Rolando Pajón sent the results of the studies from Canada to Cuba, because that was his promise, but he did not. It took a long time for him to see his Mima and his daughters again, but science was his passion. In fact, he was so involved with science in his country that before his escape he also wrote children’s books with scientific themes.

The journey before the big job

His professional career took him to the United States and in 2018 he arrived at the Moderna laboratory, where he developed his work with messenger RNA biotechnology, the potential of which had been investigated by Katalin Karikó (Nobel Prize in Medicine 2023 with Drew Weissman) many years before. and that in 2015 he had found a new way to administer it to mice, using a fatty layer called “lipid nanoparticles,” which prevented the messenger RNA from being degraded and helped place it inside the correct part of the cells.

But Pajón’s goal was to jump from animal testing to human therapy, which is where it would be required, because “saving lives” is every mission of a hero. This was what made him a key player in the development of the vaccine against Covid-19 in record time.

–How did you get to Moderna?

–I arrived at Moderna in 2018… Imagine driving from Indiana to Massachusetts, carrying a thousand things in the car… and I had an accident! It was a Friday and Monday had to start. Well, nothing… on Monday I entered through the company door. At that time, few believed in mRNA (messenger RNA) and even less in Moderna, I was one of those crazy people.

–Currently he is dedicated to disseminating the benefits and potential of messenger RNA for the creation of vaccines at international conferences. What do you miss about being in the laboratory?

–From the laboratory I miss the cycle hypothesis-question-experiment-answer and next hypothesis… The cycle of science in its purest manifestation. It happens at all levels, but in the laboratory it is the purest.

–When you participate in talks and seminars, what is the most recurring concern of the audience?

-It changes over time and they are also contradictory… For example, at the beginning they asked me how we could make it so quickly (a vaccine against covid-19), now they are starting to ask why it is going so slowly, why a combo (new vaccines) in 2025?”

–What do you think or want your next professional step to be?

–My next step… another vaccine to save lives, fight cancer and write my next book (although it does not give details about what it will be about).

The myth and fear (regarding vaccines) will always exist… We have to assume that they are part of our human nature, and we combat that by educating, teaching, giving the audience the tools and the process to learn. That is the way.

Rolando Pajón

–There is a lot of myth and fear regarding vaccines, how do you combat that?

–Myth and fear will always exist… We have to assume that they are part of our human nature, and we combat that by educating, teaching, giving the audience the tools and the process to learn. That is the way.

–When you are not working, what do you like to do in your free time?

–My free time… I have little, but it is to spend it with the family, make them part of my plans and I part of theirs. Share with my sons and daughters, my wife, my friends. I like to cook (roasted suckling pig, black beans, white rice, yuca with Cuban mojo), listen to and dance reggaeton and salsa.

2023-10-15 08:00:00
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