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WHY MRNA VACCINES ARE SO REVOLUTIONARY—AND WHAT’S AT STAKE IF WE
LOSE THEM
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Stephanie Pappas
August 6, 2025
Scientific American
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_ mRNA vaccines are a first line of defence in pandemic preparedness
and are being investigated for treatment of cancer, autoimmune
disorders and genetic diseases. RFK Jr. just cancelled a half billion
dollars of contracts for their development. _
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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday
that it will cancel $500 million worth of projects dedicated to
designing messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines
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pandemic preparedness.
The move drew sharp criticism from medical and health experts.
“Scrapping the fastest platform we have is a reckless move rooted in
a fundamental misunderstanding of vaccinology,” wrote Jake Scott, an
infectious diseases specialist and clinical associate professor of
medicine at Stanford University, on the social media site Bluesky
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The use of mRNA in vaccines has opened new doors beyond infectious
disease
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Researchers are investigating promising mRNA vaccines for pancreatic
cancer
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which currently has a five-year survival rate of just 13 percent.
They’re also studying mRNA treatments
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multiple other types of cancer, autoimmune disorders and genetic
diseases such as sickle cell anemia.
What makes mRNA so valuable is its programmability—and, for
pandemics, the speed at which it can be programmed.
Traditional vaccines introduce an inactivated or dead pathogen into
the body so that the immune system can learn to recognize and fight
it: the immune system stores that memory in case it should ever run
across the real thing. Vaccines that use mRNA, on the other hand,
instruct the body’s own cells to make parts of a protein in or on a
pathogen. The body will then learn to recognize this protein without
having to fight off the full infectious agent.
These vaccines do not interfere with cellular DNA, which is the
permanent blueprint, tucked away in the cell nucleus, that tells the
cell’s machinery what proteins to make. Those proteins, considered
the cells’ workhorses, then carry out various and critical functions
throughout the body. Messenger RNA is a middle step in the process:
DNA produces this single-stranded RNA, which then tells the cell how
to assemble amino acids into proteins. The mRNA instructions from
vaccination degrade within a few days, and studies suggest the spike
protein generated by such vaccination against COVID lasts about a
month in the body
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When making a traditional vaccine, researchers have to manufacture the
antigens, or proteins that stimulate the immune system. They might do
this by growing a whole virus in bacteria or chicken eggs and then
weakening or killing the pathogen with heat or chemicals. In other
cases, they use organisms such as yeast that are genetically
engineered to churn out pieces of a virus that are familiar to the
immune system. In these cases, the manufacturing process takes time,
testing and tweaking. For mRNA vaccines, developers design the genetic
instructions for an antigen on a computer. The manufacturing process
remains the same from vaccine to vaccine, with only the genetic
instructions changing. This allows researchers to develop multiple
vaccines at once, as well as to develop vaccines that contain mRNA to
make multiple antigens for different infections.
“We are working on about 30 different mRNA vaccines, including ones
for influenza, HIV, hepatitis C, malaria, tuberculosis, and many
others,” said Drew Weissman, a physician-scientist at the Perelman
School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who shared the
2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with biochemist Katalin
Karikó for their work on mRNA, in an interview with _Nature
Medicine_ in 2021
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The loss of HHS funding won’t stop all mRNA work in the U.S., but it
will stymy research designed to get mRNA vaccines out quickly in a
public health emergency. The canceled grants include one to develop an
mRNA-based vaccine against H5N1 avian influenza, the strain of bird
flu that is currently one of the most salient pandemic threats
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people. Researchers who study vaccines had previously warned that
current federal officials might target the technology.
“The HHS motivation really is hidden,” said Michael Osterholm, an
epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, to KFF Health News in
May
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after the Trump administration tightened restrictions on who can
access COVID boosters, “and it’s to dismiss all mRNA
technology.”
STEPHANIE PAPPAS
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freelance science journalist based in Denver, Colo.
This article was edited by Jeanna Bryner
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