According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, they have been feted for “discoveries concerning nucleoside base modification that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19”. That the citation mentions the pandemic is testament to the effect mRNA vaccines had on its evolution as well as how the global disaster became an opportunity for these vaccines’ technology to showcase its potential. The immune system sensed the synthetic mRNA to be a foreign substance that needed to be eliminated but not the cells’ mRNA. A study the duo published in 2005, with Michael Buckstein and Houping Ni, had the answer: the cells’ mRNA underwent chemical reactions that modified it in certain ways, whereas the synthetic mRNA remained unchanged. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic dawned on the world, and mRNA vaccines played a pivotal role – if also one overtaken by the dubious virtues of vaccine nationalism – in lowering its death toll.

Source: The Hindu October 02, 2023 14:47 UTC