video & transcript
To understand how this next generation of vaccines work, you first need to understand a little about how our cells work.
mRNA
Your body is made up of several different building blocks, and one of the most common of these building blocks and supremely important to your body is protein. Protein is what makes up our muscles, help build the structure of our organs, and act as some types of hormones to help our body function (U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d.). They also make antibodies – the things that help fight off bacteria and viruses.
Proteins are made of smaller molecules called amino acids. Like a room filled with wood furniture; each protein is made up of slightly different amino acids, put together in a different way. This is how each protein is given its own unique function.
The blueprints for how these proteins are put together from these amino acids are kept in your cell’s DNA, so it’s really important your DNA is kept safe. To do this, your cells lock the DNA away in a part of the cell called the nucleus, where very few parts of the cell can access it.
But the DNA being locked away makes it very difficult for the cell to access their blueprints. In order for the cell to access this information and build proteins, the body transcribes the parts of the DNA the cell needs and brings that message to the cell’s builders (How Do MRNA Vaccines Work?, 2020). This message is called mRNA.
Your cells use the mRNA, the copy of the blueprint, to build what your body needs.
mRNA vaccine
In mRNA vaccines, scientists recreate the blueprints for specific identifiers of the virus (Carnahan & Mishra, 2020) (How Do MRNA Vaccines Work?, 2020). The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines (Komaroff, 2020), for example, contain the mRNa for spike proteins – or the small projections on the outside of the coronavirus’s body.
These blueprints are then delivered to your cells, where they begin to make lots and lots of these spike proteins. Because you don’t have the blueprints for the entire coronavirus, there is no risk of contracting the virus from the vaccine (Carnahan & Mishra, 2020) (How Do MRNA Vaccines Work?, 2020). Some researchers even believe that mRNA vaccines are safer than traditional vaccines for this very reason (Carnahan & Mishra, 2020).
Your body may be making these spike proteins, but your immune system still recognizes that they don’t belong to your body. Over time, it begins to get really good at identifying and getting rid of these proteins. So if you ever do come into contact with the real virus, your immune system will recognize it and take action before it can cause too much damage.
Why is it faster compared to previous forms of the virus?
First of all, mRNA vaccines are not a new concept. Researchers have been investigating how to isolate mRNA from viruses and how to safely get it into human cells for around thirty years (How Do MRNA Vaccines Work?, 2020).
mRNA vaccines are faster to develop than traditional vaccines because they use your body’s own systems to assemble the virus proteins that will train your immune system (How Do MRNA Vaccines Work?, 2020).
Traditional vaccines would often deliver a purified form of the virus proteins themselves, or even an inactivated version of the full virus (How Do MRNA Vaccines Work?, 2020), but this requires the extra step of creating these proteins in a lab, purifying them, and then testing them to make sure that they are as similar as possible to the real thing. Doing this on a massive scale takes time (Komaroff, 2020).
The pandemic brought on an intense level of focus, funding, and volunteers for clinical studies that also helped to push the vaccine development forward.
MRNA vaccines aren’t 100 per cent perfect. These blueprints are very fragile, have a short shelf life, and require extremely cold temperatures to stay intact. This creates a challenge for shipping the vaccine to remote parts of the country.
Another new kind of vaccine uses the same idea as mRNA vaccines, but delivers the blueprint using DNA, which is more stable. This vaccine comes with its own hurdles, like getting it into the cell where it can be turned into mRNA and then into protein by the cell. That being said, there has also been some success in this field too – the AstroZeneca vaccine is an example of a vaccine that uses DNA.
Works Cited
Carnahan, R., & Mishra, S. (2020, March 26). Coronavirus: A new type of vaccine using RNA could help defeat COVID-19. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/coronavirus-a-new-type-of-vaccine-using-rna-could-help-defeat-covid-19-133217
How do mRNA vaccines work? (2020, December 18). https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/how-do-mrna-vaccines-work
Komaroff, A. (2020, December 10). Why are mRNA vaccines so exciting? Harvard Health Blog. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-are-mrna-vaccines-so-exciting-2020121021599
U.S. National Library of Medicine. (n.d.). What are proteins and what do they do?: MedlinePlus. Retrieved March 27, 2021, from https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/howgeneswork/protein/