Celtics Owner Wyc Grousbeck Donates $1 Million Toward COVID-19 Vaccine Development
BOSTON (CBS) -- Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck has donated $1 million toward local efforts to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. The money has gone toward funding the efforts being made by scientists at Mass General Hospital and Mass. Eye and Ear to try to protect people from the disease.
Grousbeck is no stranger to the local medical industry, as he is the chairman of the board for Mass. Eye and Ear, where the Grousbeck Gene Therapy Center is named after him.
"We've been told that the world needs a couple of vaccines or more to treat everybody and to try to cure the world, basically. This could be part of that," Grousbeck told WBZ-TV's Dan Roche. "It's a delivery system for genetic material -- RNA in this case -- to get into the body and make a person immune to COVID-19. That's the hope, that's the dream."
The local efforts involve Adeno-Associated-Virus technology, which involve delivering a tine pice of SARS-CoV-2 into the body to try to create immunity.