Gene corona vaccine is a true medical miracle

Chennai: Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film, Contagion, has regained its popularity significantly due to its surprising similarity to the current pandemic outbreak. The film depicts the outbreak of a deadly virus and the attempts of medical researchers around the world to contain it. This movie is an eerie reflection of the existing corona pandemic. One of the two things that viewers found inaccurate was to develop an unrealistic vaccine in the movie in a short period of time.

In addition, as the film unfolds, the CDC inadvertently trips over a weakened strain of the monkey virus. Scientist Hextor (Jennifer Erie), who uses the attenuated virus, inoculates the virus to avoid the “subject process of informed consent” and visits the infected father to see if immunity has developed. To do. The vaccine was declared successful because she was not infected by the virus by her father, and the vaccine miraculously expanded to mass production.

Since 1796, when Edward Jenner inoculated cowpox into boys to prevent smallpox, vaccines have easily stopped hundreds of millions of demis. Outside of Hollywood, vaccine development is a long and complex process, costing up to $ 500 million, often lasting 10 to 15 years, years of testing, and health authorities on the provision of vaccines as viable vaccines. It will take a few more years to get approval from. But science has proven to be stranger than fiction. Even before the pandemic was able to complete a year of its existence, the COVID-19 vaccine arrived at an unimaginable rate due to the tremendous efforts of scientists. In the United Kingdom, the EU, the United States, and several other countries, vaccination began within a year of the coronavirus causing a catastrophic pandemic.

All vaccines strive to expose the body to non-disease antigens and provoke an immune response that can block or kill the virus when a person is infected. At least eight vaccines have been adopted against the coronavirus, the most important of which are attenuated viruses, DNA or RNA vaccines, and viral protein-based vaccines. A total of more than 50 teams are working on vaccine prescribing for COVID worldwide.

Of these, mRNA is a recent and unusual approach to vaccines. Cells use mRNA to make proteins. mRNA vaccines have a chain of genetic material called mRNA in a special coating. The coating protects the mRNA from enzymes in the body that would otherwise break it down. It also helps mRNA enter the dendritic cells and macrophages of the lymph nodes near the vaccination site. The mRNA contains the code to create some of the “spike proteins” that are unique to SARS-CoV-2. The mRNA vaccine does not harm the vaccinated person because only part of the antigenic protein is made. After the pieces of peplomer protein are assembled, the cell breaks down the mRNA strand and digests it using intracellular enzymes. The importance of this process is that mRNA does not enter the nucleus. Therefore, it disproves the validity of anti-vaccination activists’ claims that mRNA vaccines can modify genetic material. Proteins or antigens expressed on the cell surface stimulate the immune system to initiate antibody production, activating T cells and repelling the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This indicates that the immune system is tuned to protect against future infections. ..

Researchers have been experimenting with mRNA vaccines for decades. However, so far no approved mRNA vaccine has been available. Several early-stage clinical trials conducted against influenza, Zika fever, rabies, and cytomegalovirus have failed with much success due to the instability of free RNA in the body. Paldi, along with Calico and Weissman, overcame the shortcomings by developing a technique for wrapping mRNA in small bubbles of fat known as lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), protecting and enhancing cell delivery.

Developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the world’s first approved COVID-19 vaccine with demonstrable efficacy is based on mRNA technology. Pfizer-BioNTech was granted an emergency use authorization on December 11, 2020, and Moderna was granted an emergency use authorization on December 17, 2020.

Clinical trial data for the Pfizer and modelna vaccines show that given both shots of two vaccinations at intervals of 3 weeks to 1 month, they are approximately 95% effective in preventing disease. I will. The main difference between the two vaccines is that Moderna vaccines can be stored in a typical household refrigerator for up to 30 days. At Imperial College London, Robin Chatock’s team has a much cheaper “self-amplifying RNA” vaccine than the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine ($ 39 for two shots) or the Moderna Jab ($ 74 for two shots). Working on, only one-hundredth of the amount of vaccine. mRNA technology means that future pandemics can be stopped more quickly because carriers are already available.

Developed by Pune-based company Gennova, India’s first mRNA vaccine, HGCO19, has been approved by Indian drug regulators to begin Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials. The COVID-19 vaccine trial in India is on track. Two of the five vaccines in human clinical trials in India have reached Phase 3. Bharat Biotech claims that an inactivated vaccine called Covexin is the safest and has fewer side effects than an mRNA vaccine. The Indian Serum Institute is testing other Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines, Covishield. Covishield is one of three coronavirus vaccines under consideration for emergency use in India, following Pfizer’s BNT162b2 and Barrat Biotech’s Cobexin. To date, more than 10 million COVID-19 cases have been recorded in India, with more than 145,000 deaths from the disease. India plans to start immunizing people against COVID-19 in January this year. The vaccination program aims to reach 300 million people by early August.

I Am Legend, a 2007 movie starring Will Smith, based on the novel of the same name, is a U.S. Army virologist who lives in New York City after the virus has completely wiped out humanity. Starring Robert Neville. The virus was thought to cure cancer, but on the contrary, it turns everyone infected into a mutant vampire-like entity. Anti-vaccine activists around the world are reminded of a similar scenario for the safety of mRNA vaccines, which was first attempted in human history.

Vaccination prevention activists claim that mRNA vaccines represent genetic manipulation because they directly intervene in the genes of the person being vaccinated. They argue that the damage caused by mRNA vaccination is irreversible and the genetic defect is permanent, so patients must live with the consequences of Down’s syndrome, Klinefelter’s syndrome, Turner’s syndrome, etc. I will. Therefore, they consider mRNA a crime.

At this time, the greatest miracle and most important medical advance in the last 100 years seems to be the mRNA vaccine. 2020 will be remembered as an unprecedented year for the medical community, with the breakthrough from traditional vaccines to genetic vaccines. This modern miracle is a testament to human ingenuity.

— The author is the Director of the Department of Alert and Anti-Corruption (DVAC).