![]() “With traditional vaccines, you have to do a lot of development. Messenger RNA vaccines encode segments of the spike protein, and those mRNA sequences are much easier to generate in the lab than the spike protein itself. Most vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 provoke an immune response that targets the coronavirus spike protein, which is found on the surface of the virus and gives the virus its characteristic spiky shape. These proteins stimulate the immune system to mount a response, without posing any risk of infection.Ī key advantage of mRNA is that it is very easy to synthesize once researchers know the sequence of the viral protein they want to target. Synthetic mRNA that encodes a viral protein can borrow this machinery to produce many copies of the protein. Instead of delivering a virus or a viral protein, RNA vaccines deliver genetic information that allows the body’s own cells to produce a viral protein. These provoke an immune response that allows the body to fight off the actual pathogen later on. Most traditional vaccines consist of either killed or weakened forms of a virus or bacterium. That I think is one of the most exciting stories behind this technology,” says Daniel Anderson, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. “What’s particularly unique to mRNA is the ability to rapidly generate vaccines against new diseases. Once the viral sequences were revealed in January, it took just days for pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Pfizer, along with its German partner BioNTech, to generate mRNA vaccine candidates. However, many years of research have gone into RNA vaccines, which is one reason why scientists were able to start testing such vaccines against Covid-19 so quickly. A vaccine based on mRNA has never been approved by the FDA before. However, just over 10 months after the genetic sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was published, two pharmaceutical companies applied for FDA emergency use authorization of vaccines that appear to be highly effective against the virus.īoth vaccines are made from messenger RNA, the molecule that cells naturally use to carry DNA’s instructions to cells’ protein-building machinery. Developing and testing a new vaccine typically takes at least 12 to 18 months. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |