(Image courtesy of National Human Genome Research Institute via Courthouse News)
(CN) The United States marked a new age in vaccine science when the first candidates it deployed against the coronavirus also marked the first time a vaccine has relied on messenger RNA, or mRNA.
Like all vaccines, the goal of mRNA vaccines is to prime the immune system to respond to a specific foreign agent. In preventing the spread of Covid-19, the target is the pandemic-unleashing coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2.
Vaccines like the Oxford-AstraZeneca version which is available in Europe but not yet approved in the United States achieve that goal using virus DNA: Genes from the spike proteins that stud the coronavirus are put into a cold virus that has been weakened, and then injected into patients.