Success of coronavirus vaccines hope for cancer and HIV vaccine
The success of the mRNA technique used in the production of coronavirus vaccines has inspired pharmaceutical companies to use the mRNA technique to combat a number of other diseases, and Moderna announced three new vaccine projects earlier this month.
TWO HIV VACCINATION STUDIES STARTED
“Even though we have shown that our mRNA-based vaccine can prevent COVID-19, this has encouraged us to carry out more ambitious development programs within our prophylactic vaccine method,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told the press.
Moderna is preparing to implement new vaccine projects that will use mRNA techniques, including two HIV vaccine candidates. The use of mRNA in vaccine studies against deadly diseases offered new hope that an effective vaccine could be produced for the virus that causes AIDS, with an experiment using monkeys that showed promising results last year.
TRADITIONAL VACCINE TECHNIQUE
Conventional vaccines either kill the virus itself, use protein fragments found in the virus, or replace the virus to kill the virus. So vaccines train the body’s immune system to kill the virus.
CORONAVIRUS VACCINE TECHNIQUE
Vaccines produced with the new mRNA technique, such as the coronavirus vaccine, encourage the body to produce the virus protein that it uses to infect cells without using real viruses. The human body recognizes the disease with this virus protein that it produces within itself and begins to develop its immune system.
Moderna has multiple cancer vaccines in clinical trials, including a personalized Melanoma vaccine tailored to patients. BioNTech also uses the mRNA platform to develop new experimental cancer treatments.
