Some of the coronavirus candidates are being developed using tech such as chicken eggs that have been around for a while (no, I don’t know which one came first…) But there are also some cutting edge genetic engineering technologies being applied to commercial vaccine development for the first time.

The gene-based vaccines (several based on messenger RNA, and which I’ll refer to as mRNA vaccines from here on out) are novel and promising because of the speed with which they can be designed and scaled for manufacturing, but none has ever been licensed for use to combat a disease. The mRNA candidates inject genetic coding from the SARS-CoV-2 virus into the vaccinee, which then induces the body to create part of the virus to attack with an immune response. In other words, through genetic coding, the body itself produces a component of the pathogen, which then primes the body to attack the full virus if it later presents itself.

Viral vector vaccines using adenoviruses are also more novel than traditional vaccine platforms. Viral vector vaccines use a genetically engineered virus that is not the vaccine target to deliver into the cells of a vaccinee the genetic instructions to produce a protein of the targeted virus, which then induces an immune response. The European Medicines Agency (Europe’s counterpart to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) recently approved an adenovirus vaccine (with a booster) for the prevention of Ebola.

AEI

I remember reading in the past that new techniques like these should be applied to vaccine development, but weren’t being because the sure-fire profit motive wasn’t there for the big drug companies. I guess tens of billions of dollars in government funding changed that in a matter of months. The good thing is we will have this technology up and running going forward. The bad thing is it sounds a little scary if it were to fall into the wrong hands.