Live Blogger: Matthew Blacksmith
Editors: Sadie Schaus and Ryan Schildcrout
This piece was written live during the 8th annual RNA Symposium, “Unmasking the Power of RNA: From Structure to Medicine” hosted by the University of Michigan’s Center for RNA Biomedicine. Follow MiSciWriters’ coverage of this event on Twitter with the hashtag #umichrna.
What do measles, the flu, and most recently, COVID-19 have in common? Each of these viruses has vaccines which have been developed to prevent infection, reduce the severity of symptoms, and promote faster recovery. So what are vaccines and how do they work? The answer varies from vaccine to vaccine. Historically, vaccines have been created by weakening or outright killing viruses before injecting them into patients to expose them to viral proteins. Once injected, the body attacks the virus, priming the immune system for a later date where you’re exposed to the virus at full strength. However, the process of creating a vaccine from a weakened virus can be long and difficult. Fortunately, scientists have been hard at work trying to create vaccines which are as effective as the current vaccine standard, but can be produced more quickly in response to global needs.
Continue reading “Dr. Drew Weissman: Nucleoside Modified mRNA-LNP Therapeutics”
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