Has the Covid-19 pandemic produced any benefit to mankind? This provocative question is considered at length in an informative publication regarding the development of mRNA vaccines. While the work on mRNA vaccines had gotten a start prior to the pandemic, the urgent need for vaccination to fight the Sars-CoV-2 virus accelerated this work significantly.

“The path to mRNA vaccines took decades, beginning with Katalin Karikó’s seminal work in the 1990s that was aimed at the major pitfall: avoiding the massive inflammation induced by mRNAs injected into mice. Together with Drew Weissman and colleagues at UPenn, in Immunity in 2005, she determined that this inflammatory response was due to Toll-like receptors and could largely be pre-empted by modifying an mRNA nucleotide from uridine to pseudo-uridine. This finding, along with lipid nanoparticles, served as the backbone for the successful mRNA COVID-19 vaccines that achieved 95% efficacy against symptomatic infections in the pivotal Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech large-scale trials, and over a billion doses have been administered worldwide. The FDA approved an mRNA vaccine for Ebola in 2019, and multiple other pathogens are now being targeted in clinical trials, including HIV, cytomegalovirus, rabies, RSV, influenza A, and chikungunya. In addition, an mRNA vaccine against the malaria parasite Plasmodium has been tested in non-human primates. mRNA therapeutics are expanding well beyond infectious diseases, including revving up the immune response to various types of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Furthermore, there is potential for downregulating the immune response to autoimmune conditions and fostering growth of new blood vessels for cardiovascular indications. What begin as a replacement for a uridine base to squash an inflammatory response in mice evolved into the basis for a broad therapeutic platform to fight both communicable and non-communicable diseases in people.”1

Read the full publication here.

Disclaimers

  • The material in these reviews is from various public open access sources, meant for educational and informational purposes only
  • Any personal opinions expressed are those of only the author(s) and are not intended to represent the position of any organization(s)
  • No official support by any organization(s) has been provided or should be inferred

References

  1. Topol, E. (2022, May 30). The bright side of the Covid pandemic. By Eric Topol. https://erictopol.substack.com/p/the-bright-side-of-the-covid-pandemic?s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=direct