US media reports indicated that US President Donald Trump wanted to appoint Munsif Sallawi, the Moroccan expert in the pharmaceutical industry, to head the medical team that would oversee research for a vaccine for Corona.
According to a report published by the New York Times, quoting administration officials, Al-Salawi will be part of the team dedicated to producing a vaccine against Corona, accompanied by Gustav Berna of the US Army.
Al-Salawi, who was previously head of the vaccine division at the American company "GlaxoSmithKline", will participate in the team that Trump is preparing to produce 300 million doses of Corona vaccine.
While the pharmaceutical companies will participate in conducting clinical research for the vaccine in an attempt to reduce the time to develop the vaccine to eight months, as Al-Salawi will be the main advisor for the program.
The US newspaper "Politico" said that a team from the White House led by Health Minister Alex Azar, the White House physician, Deborah Perks, and White House advisor Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, interviewed a number of candidates, but the opinion eventually settled on Moncef Slaoui.
Recall that the United States has returned to record large numbers of deaths caused by Covid-19 disease caused by the emerging corona virus, which President Trump has offered wide criticism, the most recent of which was the press conference that he withdrew due to the embarrassing questions journalists asked him and their criticism of Trump's method and performance in the crisis The country is suffering and caused a large number of injuries and deaths.
It should be noted that Al-Salawi was appointed as responsible for scientific research at the company "GlaxoSmithKline", where he supervised the development of 24 vaccines between 2011-2016.
According to Moroccan media reports, Al-Salawi, 61, worked for the research and development division of "GlaxoSmithKline" company between 2015 and 2017, and helped to develop vaccines to prevent malaria, stomach and intestinal infections in children, and cervical cancer.
He is also a member of the board of directors of "Moderna", which conducted the first vaccine test for Corona in America, and he previously worked with a group of epidemiological professors earlier to find vaccines related to HIV.
He left Morocco at the age of 17 to study medicine in France, then traveled to Belgium where he settled for 27 years during which he studied molecular biology and received a doctorate in immunology from the Université de Libre de Brussels.
He completed post-doctoral studies at Harvard Medical School and Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston.
Author of more than 100 scientific publications and presentations, he is a member of the Board of Directors of the PhRMA Foundation and the Board of Directors of the American Biotechnology Industry Organization.