Hi, my name is Kate Mullane.
I'm an infectious disease physician at the of Chicago,
and I've been working on the vaccines against COVID.
The first two vaccines approved for early use by the FDA
to fight SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,
are both mRNA vaccines.
While they are the first messenger
RNA vaccines to be approved for widespread use in the US,
mRNA vaccines aren't actually that new.
The vaccine platform was initially
developed in the early 1990s, in an effort
to create safe and effective vaccines
in a pandemic situation.
mRNA vaccines have been developed
for other diseases like rabies, Ebola, and Zika,
and a large scale influenza trial
was carried out in humans from 1993 to 1996.
Over the past 10 years, researchers
have been improving messenger RNA vaccine effectiveness.
Thanks to billions of dollars in global funding
and thousands of scientists and physicians working for months,
we've been able to fit years of research and analysis
into just 10 months, without skipping
any regulatory or testing steps to development of the COVID-19
vaccine.
Most vaccines work by presenting your body
with a weakened or dead version of a virus
or some of the proteins found on the surface of the virus.
By showing the virus or parts of the virus
to your immune system, the vaccine
teaches your body to recognize the pathogen and turns
on production of antibodies, which are proteins that
attach to the virus and allow killer immune cells
to gobble it up.
Or in the case of COVID, the antibodies
glom onto the spike protein.
The spike protein is what the SARS-CoV-2 virus
uses to attach to cells and infect them.
An antibody against this protein prevents the virus
from attaching to human cells, so the virus
can't infect those cells.
How does an mRNA a vaccine work and how do we
know that they're safe?
mRNA or messenger RNA, vaccines teach the immune system
to make memory cells.
So that if you are exposed to the virus at a future date,
the immune system has the ability
to rev up production of antibodies rapidly
and fight off the pathogen again.
An mRNA vaccine is a copy of the genetic code
used by the SARS-CoV-2 virus to make the spike protein.
When the COVID-19 epidemic arrived,
researchers from around the world
sprang into action to identify and insert
the correct genetic code into the mRNA platform.
mRNA vaccines give that recipe to our immune system.
Rather than presenting your body with the dead virus or parts
of the virus, mRNA vaccines show your body
the blueprint needed to make a viral protein.
Your body uses that blueprint to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike
proteins without including any part of the virus itself.
Once the body has created those spike proteins,
the proteins are seen by our immune system
and the immune system is able to respond
in the same way it would to being
infected with a live virus.
In this way, it works just like any other vaccine platform.
Preparing your body to fight against the virus
if it's ever encountered in the future.
However, unlike attenuated or killed vaccines,
the person is not infected with a virus, not even
one that's been weakened or killed.
mRNA is a small fragile fragment of genetic information
that's rapidly broken down within the bloodstream
and within cells.
Well, it's a type of genetic material.
It cannot interact with, bind to, or affect DNA.
It cannot even enter the cell's nucleus where the DNA resides.
mRNA is broken down rapidly by enzymes in the bloodstream
and in the body once its code is translated to make protein.
With advances in technology, it's
much easier and less expensive to make messenger RNA and mRNA
vaccines in the laboratory, making it easier
to produce lots of vaccines, fulfilling
the hope for rapid production of safe and effective vaccines
during a global pandemic.
So far, the COVID-19 vaccines appear
to be extremely effective, up to 95% effective, and very safe,
with allergic reactions reported in only 6.1 cases per one
million doses administered.
While producing and distributing enough vaccine
for a global population is an enormous challenge,
it's one we're grateful to have.
As a physician, it's my hope that these new vaccines
will allow us to protect our communities and ourselves
and finally overcome COVID-19.