COVID-19 vaccine is a miracle of technology

The COVID-19 vaccine has been administered in the United Kingdom this week less than a year after COVID-19 became a catastrophic pandemic. Pfizer’s vaccines are also affiliated with BioNTech, and Moderna uses new types of vaccine technologies such as cell engineering.

Traditional vaccines introduce pieces of viral proteins into the body to learn recognition and attack. However, these vaccines use what is called messenger RNA or mRNA to give the body a blueprint for producing its own viral fragments to attack. I spoke with Safi Bahcall, a biotechnology investor and author of “Loonshots: How to Foster Crazy Ideas to Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries.” Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Safi Bahcall: A few weeks ago, my wife and I bought one of these vacuum cleaner robots that roam your room.Now you can think about your body [being] Full of these little robots. And those robots are the proteins in your body that get the job done. They perform all sorts of tasks. About 20 or 25 years ago, a group of scientists asked, “So where did the robots in our bodies come from?” After all, our bodies have these little 3D printers, stirring those robots. They are called ribosomes, but you can think of them like a 3D printer. Then, when you send the instructions to the printer, the robot will be spit out. So scientists had this really crazy idea, and they said. Do 3D printers in our bodies produce their own vaccines? And that is an example of an mRNA drug.

Mollywood: In short, this is a vaccine development at a speed no one has ever seen, and of course, combined with continued medical progress. What does this all suggest for the next pandemic?

Barcall: Well, I think it’s incredibly encouraging. The mRNA itself is very fragile, so you need to code it with something that protects it. And that’s why it actually took so long to develop. Because it is very difficult to get that protective coating. But that positions us very well. Because the next time you encounter such a virus, you know what will work and hopefully you can prepare in advance. Hopefully we can make a huge portfolio of vaccines, and perhaps understand what are some of the vaccines we can make that attack many different bugs that look the same. You can even do it.

wood: Well, in that case, what do you still know? What are the hurdles researchers may still face with mRNA and other vaccine development tools?

Barcall: It is very rare for everyone to have a drug or vaccine that works the same way. Some work well with younger patients, while others work well with older patients. Sometimes there are patients who are immunocompromised where it doesn’t work very well. So what you want is a lot of vaccines, which not only gives doctors many different ways to try to prevent the disease, but can also try to treat the disease if the patient gets sick. I will.

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Unfortunately, the vaccine is here, but it hasn’t been evenly distributed yet, MSNBC operation It probably has the right to it. You need to pretend that there is no vaccine at all. Until then, this sucker is spreading rapidly, as the vaccine is not here until it comes here. So, even if there are bad examples around us, keep a good fight with the mask and the orders at home.

And to say that it’s not evenly distributed, to listen to “Make Me Smart” as well, not to realize that the hesitation around these new vaccines comes from distrust of the long-filled health system. You’ll hear listeners take us to the task-standing systematic racism. And we must admit that hesitating blacks and browns to get the new vaccine is not as simple as anti-vaccinator sentiment. And this is about it: A Survey In fact, the three major vaccine candidates are 90%, 94%, and 95% effective overall, according to a MIT report earlier this month, but appear to be less effective in Asian clinical research participants. MIT researchers say it’s they Less effective in black and Asian populations,Typically. The authors of the study said that, as always, the vaccine was basically designed for the Caucasian gene, as clinical trials did not contain a sufficiently underrated minority. .. However, researchers said vaccine deficiencies should be relatively easy to fix.