The Days of Miracles and Wonder

Here ' s a good overview by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic ofthe history of mRNA technology. This heretofore obscure field of biomedical research burst into view with the Covid-19 vaccines, but the apparent suddenness of vaccine development was misleading. As I have noted here before, the technology was decades in development. As the technology became more mature, Pfizer partnered with one of the speculative ventures, BionTech, originally to develop flu vaccines, and then of course pivoted to Covid-19. Unlike Moderna, Pfizer actually didn ' t take federal funding for that final stage of development. But for most of the decades, the work depended on government and philanthropic funding -- the big publicly traded drug companies won ' t invest very much in areas of basic biology with only speculative prospect for commercial success.And that ' s understandable. Most basic research doesn ' t end up having any commercial application, at least not for a very long time. I have mentioned this before in reference to physics, although after a century quantum theory does finally have some application in electronic devices and relativity is applicable to the Global Positioning System. In the case of mRNA, however, Covid-19 vaccines are likely only the beginning. There is potential for vaccines against any number of infectious and parasitic diseases; for vaccines that target the specific cells of an individual cancer; and, in a spin-off technology, for injections that can get the body to m...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs