Conventional vaccines use live attenuated and inactivated pathogensor viral cells,which provide durable protection against disease. There are major hurdles tothis approach to vaccine development especially when there is a need for more rapid development and large-scale production.Over the past decades, messenger RNA or mRNA, genetic materials that our cells read and translate to make proteins, has become the spotlight of vaccine development and gene therapy. 

There are several therapeutic benefits of using mRNA over a dead attenuated virus and DNA-based vaccines.

 1.First, safety: mRNA does not contain a live virus and there is no potential risk of infection. mRNA cannot enter the nucleus of the cell, thus cannot affect a person’s RNA. Moreover, mRNA is degraded by normal cellular processes.

 2.Second, efficacy: mRNA can be chemically modified to be more stable and highly translatable; it can be delivered in lipid nanoparticles to allow rapid uptake and expression once injected into the cell.

 3.Third, production: mRNA vaccinemanufacturingis scalable and inexpensive, this is due to the high yields of in vitro transcription reactions. mRNA vaccines can be developed in a laboratory using a DNA template and other available materials, indicating that the process can be standardized and scaled up rapidly. 

In the future, mRNA vaccine technology has the potential to allow one vaccine to target multiple diseases. For more information about how the mRNA vaccine works and triggers our immune system, the article “How Moderna’s Vaccine Works” by Nature explains the concepts thoroughly with well-designed graphics.