![]() “We think you need to have a series of shots that coax the immune system into making the right kind of antibodies to protect you against HIV,” Burton says. They do this by coaxing the immune system first to produce a rare antibody that usually shows up only after years of infection, then to repeat and fine-tune that production until there’s a strong, targeted response 4. They hope to make broadly neutralizing antibodies that can protect against various strains of the quickly mutating virus by attacking parts of the virus that don’t change much. “You just need the sequence of the protein that you’re going to vaccinate with and you can make it quickly,” says Dennis Burton, an immunologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California.īurton is among researchers at Scripps who are working with Moderna on a way to prevent infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, which has eluded vaccine attempts for the past 40 years. Speed and versatility make mRNA exciting to researchers. And after years in development involving hundreds of researchers at multiple research institutions and companies, the existing mRNA technology meant vaccines could be manufactured and tested at an unprecedented pace 3. The two COVID-19 mRNA vaccines that were approved in the United States, from Moderna of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a collaboration between Pfizer and BioNTech of Mainz, Germany, had efficacies of more than 90% in clinical trials 1, 2. The COVID-19 vaccines, for example, instruct the body to make copies of the coronavirus’s spike protein. The resulting mRNA, introduced to a body, lets cells produce their own antigens, which the immune system then learns from. Unlike the customized, iterative growth set-ups for conventional vaccines, the same process can be used for any mRNA sequence. The process can take weeks.īy contrast, mRNA vaccines are made by simply inserting a snippet of RNA code into a small DNA molecule in a cell, then quickly growing more in a reactor tank. ![]() “For every disease that we don’t have vaccines, we will try mRNA,” he said.Ĭonventional vaccines are made by cultivating the pathogen in an appropriate cell or bacterial culture - fertilized hen eggs are used for most influenza vaccines, for example - then applying various methods to inactivate it so it retains antigens but doesn’t cause the illness. Bill Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation underwrites vaccine development, told USA Today in January that the possibilities were vast. ![]() Both big pharma companies and small biotechs are investing in the technology, aided by funding from governments and private foundations. “We believe messenger RNA is the technology of the future for infectious disease,” says Mariola Fotin-Mleczek, a biologist and chief technology officer at CureVac, a biopharmaceutical company in Tübingen, Germany, that is working on several mRNA vaccines. Not only is mRNA set to help get the world past the current crisis, it’s also generating hope for a whole new generation of vaccines that could protect people from everything from HIV/AIDS to malaria. The course of the COVID-19 pandemic was changed in late 2020 with a vaccine based on messenger RNA (mRNA), an unprecedented technology that has proved remarkably successful in protecting against the virus. Credit: Vincent Kalut/Photonews via Getty Images The technology used expedited testing and manufacture. An early batch of the Pfizer BioNTech mRNA vaccine against COVID-19.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |