Supply problems and rare but serious side effects of AstraZeneca and Janssen vaccines have led to In addition, Denmark has announced that it is permanently suspending immunization with AstraZeneca. These are two events that highlight the preference of health authorities for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. A type of messenger RNA-based drug that Bill Gates bet on and invested in.
What are messenger RNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna and how do they work?
explains on its website that mRNA vaccines are a new type of vaccine that protect against infectious diseases, but do not inject an attenuated or modified virus – as most vaccines and those of AstraZeneca and Janssen do – into the body of a healthy person.
Instead, these vaccines teach our cells to make a protein, or even a portion of a protein, that triggers an immune response within our body. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from infection if the real virus enters our bodies.
Vaccine research with this technology began to develop in the 1990s and advances were made in the field of vaccines against HIV or Zika. However, with those of Covid-19, it is the first time that this system has been tested in the general population.
Bill Gates invested and bet on messenger RNA vaccines
Billionaire Bill Gates, who has played a great role as a philanthropist and disseminator in the Covid-19 pandemic, had already highlighted the importance of the development of Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech messenger RNA-based vaccines. A type of technology that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded since 2014 as a way to create vaccines for malaria and HIV. “It’s great that technology is now enabling unprecedented progress on COVID-19,” the Bill Gates co-founder explained via his blog.
Bill Gates explains that the best thing about this type of technology is that it also has other advantages such as mRNA vaccines can be created faster than conventional ones and are much easier to produce in large quantities. As a disadvantage, the billionaire says that there are still not many factories where mRNA products can be manufactured and that many of them, such as Pfizer and Moderna, must be stored at temperatures as low as -70 ° C, which makes them particularly difficult to distribute in developing countries
However, the Microsoft co-founder has been very hopeful about this new way of creating vaccines: “I predict that mRNA vaccines will be faster to develop, easier to scale and more stable to store during the next five to ten years. That would be a huge step forward, both for future pandemics and other global health challenges.” “mRNA vaccines are a promising platform for diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria,” he added.
What possibilities does messenger RNA technology open up: HIV or cancer vaccines
Given this good reception of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in terms of efficacy and side effects, pharmaceutical companies have announced new advances in the development of vaccines for the immunization of other diseases in recent months.
Thus, researchers from BioNTech and the Johannes Gutenberg University (Mainz, Germany) presented at the beginning of the year a messenger RNA vaccine, like those created by the German company for Covid-19, which delays the onset and reduces the severity of a disease. similar to multiple sclerosis in mice. Specifically, the preclinical results of the vaccine show that it restores the body’s tolerance to its own proteins, suppressing the characteristic immune hyperreactivity that the disease possesses and that is the main objective of therapies against autoimmune pathologies. Also, from BioNTech, its vice president pointed out that cancer can be treated with messenger RNA technology in three to five years.
In the same vein, Moderna biotech also announced earlier this year that it is using messenger RNA technology in the development of new vaccines for influenza, HIV and the Nipah virus. The US company, in a statement, said it hopes to start clinical trials with vaccines for influenza and HIV throughout 2021. “After having shown that our mRNA-based vaccine can prevent covid-19, this has encouraged the pursuit of more ambitious development programs,” CEO Stéphane Bancel said in the note.
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