Vaccines currently used to prevent COVID-19 have been developed using a newer technique that scientists are trying to use to produce vaccines for HIV, cancer and other ailments.
COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech, which are approved for use in the USA and are currently being distributed, were developed using messenger RNA (mRNA). Although scientists have been developing mRNA vaccines and therapies for decades, the COVID-19 vaccines are the first ever approved for use in humans.
The rapid development and emergency release of the COVID-19 vaccines came about due to massive financial investments in the effort of vaccine production and the happiness of the pandemic, just at the moment when mRNA technology has advanced enough to deliver a safe and effective vaccine . The success has inspired companies to accelerate efforts to use the mRNA technique to tackle a number of other diseases, with Moderna announcing three new vaccine projects earlier this month.
“The uniquely challenging year of 2020 for society as a whole has been an extraordinary proof-of-concept period for Moderna,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. “Even as we have shown that we can prevent mRNA-based vaccine COVID-19, it has encouraged us to pursue more ambitious development programs within our preventative vaccine modality.”
Rocco-Herrmann / Getty
Traditional vaccines use modified or killed virus, or parts of proteins found in the virus, to train the body’s immune system to kill infections before they take hold. The new mRNA vaccines encourage the body to produce the virus protein, which in the case of COVID-19 is the ‘peak’ protein that the coronavirus uses to infect cells without using the actual virus. Unlike misinformation spread online after the release of the COVID-19 vaccines, mRNA vaccines are not capable of altering human genetic code.
The new projects developed by Moderna contain a possible HIV vaccine, something that scientists have been trying to develop for decades to repeatedly fall short. The use of the mRNA approach offers new hope that an effective vaccine for the virus that causes AIDS can be produced, with an experiment with monkeys showing promising results last year. The company has two candidates in development, and both are expected to begin human clinical trials later in 2021.
Modern also uses the mRNA platform to develop vaccines for common flu viruses. Slower techniques are forcing scientists to guess which strains of the virus will be the next flu season, leading to vaccines that are only partially effective. Other businesses could also follow this approach, according to a Pfizer spokesman Newsweek that the company worked on a flu vaccine with BioNTech prior to the COVID-19 project, although further development may be suspended.
The mRNA technique offers significant advantages over rapidly mutating viruses such as influenza, as vaccine candidates can be quickly updated with genetic sequences from the strains confirmed to circulate, potentially producing shots that are much more effective than those previously developed with guesswork. .
“RNA is basically biological code or biological software,” he said. John P. Cooke, mRNA expert, told Healthline. “You write the code very fast and encode in protein for any protein we want the cells to generate … If we can get the software in the cell, the cell will follow the instructions and make the protein for us.”
The third newly announced program from Moderna, out of a total of 24 programs the company is working on, aims to develop a vaccine for the Nipah virus, a relatively rare pathogen transmitted by infected animals. The virus has killed between 40 and 75 percent of those who contracted it in isolated outbreaks that have occurred in Asia since 2000.
A number of companies are also hoping to fight cancer with mRNA vaccines. Unlike vaccines used to prevent viral infections, cancer vaccines are commonly used to fight disease in those who have already developed cancer. Modern has multiple cancer vaccines in clinical trials, including a personalized melanoma vaccine tailored to individual patients. BioNTech also uses the mRNA platform to develop new experimental cancer therapies.
The mRNA technique is used to develop vaccines and therapies against several other viruses, with trials being carried out or underway for Zika, cytomegalovirus and rabies vaccines. Vaccinations for cancers that can cause cancers, such as the Epstein-Barr virus, are also under development. In addition, the question of whether the technique can be useful against autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, while a possible therapy based on mRNA to tackle heart disease, is also being investigated.