Stanford scientists publish mRNA sequence for Moderna vaccine on Github

A group of Stanford researchers have hacked Moderna’s messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine for the novel coronavirus, Motherboard first reported Monday, and published its entire genetic sequence on the Open source Github code repository.

the MRNA vaccines work by provide genetic information which allows the body’s own cells to make a viral protein, like a harmless, technical version of the advanced protein that the coronavirus uses to find its way into the body’s cells. When the body then produces this protein, the immune system quickly mobilizes to fight it, performing a kind of live-fire training exercise that prepares it to fight the coronavirus itself; the actual mRNA delivered by the vaccine decays quickly, but the antibodies remain as a garrison against future infection. By the MIT press office, this allows a lot easier and faster production than previous generations of vaccines based on the production of proteins under laboratory conditions. The mRNA sequence serves more or less as the source code for the vaccine.

The Stanford team documents published on Github include two pages of explanation and two pages containing the complete mRNA sequence for Moderna’s vaccine. The researchers wrote in the report that although Moderna’s mRNA ended up in a much of the population, scientists and medical personnel do not have access to the genetic sequences actually involved.

“With the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines, these synthetic mRNAs have become widely distributed RNA species in many human populations,” the researchers wrote. “Despite their ubiquity, sequences are not always available for such RNAs … Sharing sequence information for widely used therapies has the advantage of allowing all researchers or clinicians using sequencing approaches to identify rapidly these sequences as therapeutic derivatives rather than as hosts or infectious. originally. “

The research team told Motherboard that they did not “reverse engineer” the vaccine, they did. simply “displayed the putative sequence of two synthetic RNA molecules which had become sufficiently prevalent in the general environment of medicine and human biology in 2021.”

“As the vaccine rolled out, these sequences started to show up in many investigative and diagnostic studies,” Stanford scientists Andrew Fire and Massa Shoura told Motherboard via email. “Knowing these sequences and having the ability to differentiate them from other RNAs in the analysis of future biomedical data sets is of great benefit.”

“For this work, RNAs were obtained as rejects from small portions of vaccine doses that remained in vials after immunization; such portions should have been otherwise discarded and have been analyzed under FDA clearance for research use, ”they added. Fire and Shoura told Motherboard that they had received permission from the FDA to collect leftover vaccine that would otherwise not have been used in empty vials. and that they had notified Moderna in advance of their intention to release the footage without receiving any objection in turn.

There is “a substantial economy of scale and educational value in having the footage available as soon as possible and not having to guess where it came from,” the two researchers told Motherboard.

Moderna’s mRNA vaccine and competitor vaccine manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech were the first never approved by the Food and Drug Administration. By motherboard, the founder of PowerDNS, Bert Hubert, was able to use publicly available data to reveal Pfizer mRNA sequence at the end of last year.

As Hubert wrote in a separate blog post, however, that does not mean that anyone will soon be brewing either vaccine at home as part of a “distributed manufacturing revolution”. Hubert detailed the ridiculously complicated supply chain that powers pharmaceutical companies’ vaccine manufacturing, which involves many complex ingredients, the production of DNA and mRNA in specialized facilities, and the combination of mRNA and lipids. into lipid nanoparticles (LNP), the last of them perhaps only a certain number. experts in the “weak hundreds” know how to do this. The final steps, including formulation where LNPs are mixed with other more generic ingredients and filled into vials, also require specialist knowledge and equipment, with subsequent distribution to patients being its own. major technical challenge.

“Technically, the last step in the supply chain for these COVID-19 mRNA vaccines is the production of the spike protein,” Hubert concluded. “This is what happens in the cells of your body after you receive the vaccine. You are the global revolution in vaccine manufacturing. “

Joe Biden’s administration faces pressure from some lawmakers to suspend patent protection on COVID-19 vaccines, depending on the weather, in the hope of ensuring that incentives for profit do not prevent reaching mass immunization levels that could quell the pandemic. (Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, Pfizer Member board of directors, argued that the bottlenecks in mass vaccination mainly resided supplies and production, not intellectual property restrictions.) The White House is still considering whether to do so, according to CNBC.

[Wired]