Covid: the incredible turning point of RNA vaccines

Are vaccines against nucleic acids – DNA and messenger RNA – the vaccines of the future? It is still too early to say for sure. But the spectacular results achieved by the biotechnologies BioNTech (Pfizer’s ally) and Moderna, whose two vaccine candidates against Covid-19 are based on messenger RNA, clearly show one thing in any case: from the planetary mobilization that has produced both private and laboratories That public, the Wuhan-initiated pandemic will serve as a formidable catalyst for vaccine research – and suddenly unearthed technologies that have grown (or mature?) For a long time in the shadows. Starting with that of messenger RNA vaccines, for which the first scientific study dates back to twenty-seven years, however, due to a French team (“The European Journal of Immunology”, 1993).

The intensification and acceleration of research caused by the health crisis cannot be stressed enough. It took nine years in the 1950s to develop and authorize a measles vaccine; even in the past decade, the average development time of the 21 US FDA-approved vaccines was eight years, reports “JAMA” magazine. If they get, as is likely, approval from the same FDA in the coming weeks, both BioNTech and Moderna (which co-developed its vaccine candidate with the US National Institutes of Health) will be able to do the same. thing in less than a year.