- mRNA vaccine technology is not entirely new
Vaccines such as the inactivated polio vaccine, or most flu vaccines, use inactivated viruses to trigger a person’s immune system to respond to that disease-causing organism. In other vaccines, such as the hepatitis B vaccine, an individual protein made by that organism is injected instead to trigger a similar response.
mRNA vaccines, however, trick the body into making the viral protein itself which, in turn, triggers an immune response.
Although the COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech are the first mRNA vaccines to complete all clinical trial stages and be licensed for use, the technology has been around for a while.
Human trials of cancer vaccines using the same mRNA technology have been taking place since at least 2011. ‘If there was a real problem with the technology, we’d have seen it before now for sure,’ said Prof. Goldman.
Because the technology can be deployed extremely rapidly, and clinical trials have been so successful, mRNA platforms will be an important means of preparing for future epidemics, he says.