, Cambridge, Mass., have developed a potential shortcut to this laborious process that could shorten the time it takes to develop vaccines against ongoing outbreaks like the current coronavirus. They’re turning the human body into a living lab for churning out the viral red flags that activate the immune system.a crash course in recognizing and rallying defenses against disease-causing microbes like bacteria or viruses.
Researchers at Moderna hot wired this process by packing their vaccine with mRNA, the genetic material that comes from DNA and makes proteins. Moderna’s idea is to load its coronavirus vaccine with mRNA that codes for the right coronavirus proteins and then inject that into the body. Immune cells in the lymph can process that mRNA and start making the protein in just the right way for other immune cells to recognize and mark them for destruction. Dr.
And there are health benefits to this strategy as well. “One of the things that we are able to do with an mRNA vaccine is more closely mimic what it means to get a viral infection,” says Hoge. “The way the body processes the viral protein can and often is very different from the way it processes the same protein made in a stainless steel tank.