COVID-19 vaccine technology research could lead to HIV and cancer vaccines

The vaccines currently used to prevent COVID-19 were developed with a newer technique that scientists are trying to use to produce vaccines against HIV, cancer and other conditions.

Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccines, which have been approved for use in the United States and are currently in distribution, were developed using messenger RNA (mRNA). Although scientists have been working on the development of vaccines and mRNA therapies for decades, COVID-19 vaccines are the first to be approved for use in humans.

The rapid development and emergency approval of COVID-19 vaccines has occurred both due to massive monetary investments in vaccine production efforts and the luck of the coming pandemic just as the technology of mRNA had become sufficiently advanced to produce a safe and effective vaccine. The success has inspired companies to step up their efforts to use the mRNA technique to fight a host of other diseases, with Moderna announcing three new vaccine projects earlier this month.

“The year 2020, which is particularly difficult for the whole company, has proven to be an extraordinary show of principle period for Moderna,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. “Even though we have shown that our mRNA-based vaccine can prevent COVID-19, this has encouraged us to pursue more ambitious development programs under our prophylactic vaccine modality.

Traditional vaccines use modified or killed viruses, or parts of proteins found in the virus, to train the body’s immune system to kill infections before they set in. The new mRNA vaccines trick the body into making the viral protein, which in the case of COVID-19 is the “spike” protein that the coronavirus uses to infect cells, without using any of the real viruses. Unlike the misinformation disseminated online following the release of COVID-19 vaccines, mRNA vaccines are incapable of altering the human genetic code.

New projects being developed by Moderna include a possible vaccine against HIV, something scientists have been trying to develop for decades only to repeatedly fail. Use of the mRNA approach offers new hope that an effective vaccine against the virus that causes AIDS can be produced, with a trial in monkeys showing promising results last year. The company has two candidates in development, both scheduled to begin human clinical trials later in 2021.

Moderna is also using the mRNA platform to develop vaccines against common influenza viruses. Slower techniques force scientists to guess which strains of the virus will be dominant in the coming flu seasons, leading to vaccines that are only partially effective. Other companies could take this approach as well, a Pfizer spokesperson saying Newsweek that the company was working on an influenza vaccine with BioNTech before the COVID-19 project, although further developments are on hold.

The mRNA technique offers significant advantages against rapidly mutating viruses like influenza, as candidate vaccines can be rapidly updated with genetic sequences of strains that are indeed confirmed to be in circulation, potentially producing many injections. more effective than those developed with guesswork in advance.

“RNA is basically biological code or biological software,” mRNA expert Dr. John P. Cooke told Healthline. “You write the code very quickly and you encode into RNA pretty much any protein that we want cells to generate … If we can get that software into the cell, the cell will follow those instructions and make that protein for us. . “

Moderna’s recently announced third program, out of a total of 24 programs the company is working on, aims to develop a vaccine against the Nipah virus, a relatively rare pathogen that is transmitted from infected animals. The virus has killed between 40 and 75 percent of those who contracted it in isolated outbreaks 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 typically used to fight disease in those who have already developed cancer. Moderna has several cancer vaccines in clinical trials, including a personalized melanoma vaccine that is tailored for individual patients. BioNTech is also using the mRNA platform to develop new experimental cancer therapies.

The mRNA technique is used to develop vaccines and therapies against several other viruses, trials have been conducted or underway for vaccines against Zika virus, cytomegalovirus and rabies. Vaccines against viruses that can cause certain cancers, such as the Epstein-Barr virus, are also in development. In addition, research into whether the technique might be useful against autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis is ongoing, while possible mRNA therapy to help fight heart disease is also in the pipeline. study.