Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brainstuffe
Speaker 1: Lauren Bogobam here. For decades, researchers have dreamed about harnessing
Speaker 1: the power of genetic technology to prevent or treat a
Speaker 1: range of diseases. A synthetic version of a molecule in
Speaker 1: the human body known as messenger ribonucleic acid or m
Speaker 1: RNA held that promise. Just how to make it work
Speaker 1: presented daunting challenges that much of the science community thought
Speaker 1: was a mountain too hide a climb, But a handful
Speaker 1: of researchers didn't give up. They spent years trying to
Speaker 1: solve the mystery of m RNA. Then, just like a
Speaker 1: made for TV movie, but very much real, they cracked
Speaker 1: the code just in time to save the world from
Speaker 1: the deadly novel coronavirus. M RNA vaccines work by delivering
Speaker 1: instructions to cells that empower those cells to produce antigens,
Speaker 1: which are molecules that prompt and i'm une system response
Speaker 1: in your body, which includes your immune system creating antibodies
Speaker 1: that can identify and fight an invader like the coronavirus.
Speaker 1: But let's unpack all of that to understand mr Anda
Speaker 1: vaccine technology and how it's being used to protect us
Speaker 1: from COVID nineteen. We need to talk about proteins. Proteins
Speaker 1: are often referred to as the building blocks of life.
Speaker 1: They're posential for the structure, function, and regulation of the
Speaker 1: body's tissues and organs. Every cell in your body contains
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of distinct proteins, each of which is
Speaker 1: made up of several types of amino acids that attached
Speaker 1: to each other to create chains of varying lengths that
Speaker 1: fold into various shapes. Proteins shape has a great deal
Speaker 1: to do with its function. Some proteins regulate specific processes
Speaker 1: within a cell, like growth, development, metabolism, and reproduction. Some
Speaker 1: proteins act as biological atalysts to help the body build muscle,
Speaker 1: destroy toxins, and break down food particles during digestion. Other
Speaker 1: proteins are antibodies that let the immune system fight infections
Speaker 1: and clear out harmful pathogens. The cells are assigned their
Speaker 1: amino acid sequences and thus told the function of their
Speaker 1: proteins via the body's messenger RNA or mRNA. You can
Speaker 1: think of this process like a spy mission. mRNA hands
Speaker 1: the cell instructions to make a certain protein. Once the
Speaker 1: cell makes its protein, the cell destroys the instructions and
Speaker 1: then goes to work manufacturing that specific protein. A few
Speaker 1: researchers began to wonder what if science could develop a
Speaker 1: synthetic mRNA with a specific coding sequence that could be
Speaker 1: delivered to the body and instruct cells to create any
Speaker 1: type of protein, growth agents to repair damaged tissues, enzymes
Speaker 1: to cure rear diseases, or antibodies to protect at infection.
Speaker 1: In n A group of University of Wisconsin researchers actually
Speaker 1: succeeded in making synthetic mRNA and tested it in laboratory mice. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: that synthetic mRNA was identified by the mice's immune systems
Speaker 1: as an invader and was destroyed before ever reaching the
Speaker 1: target cell to deliver the coded message. Many in the
Speaker 1: scientific world saw this as a fatal flaw and turned
Speaker 1: their attentions elsewhere, but two researchers at the University of
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania set out to find a way to make mRNA
Speaker 1: more stable. In two thousand five, after a decade of
Speaker 1: painstaking research, they discovered that they could use tiny balls
Speaker 1: of fat called lipid nanoparticles or LPNs to protect the
Speaker 1: synthetic mRNA. This gave the fragile molecule stealth like qualities
Speaker 1: that enabled it to escape the immune systems radar. With
Speaker 1: this tool in hand, more research followed. In twenty in
Speaker 1: the Cambridge, Massachusetts based pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Maderna Incorporated
Speaker 1: was founded to focus specifically on mr anda vaccine technologies.
Speaker 1: The name Maderna comes from combining the words modified and RNA.
Speaker 1: And Meanwhile, back in two thousand eight, German based bio
Speaker 1: n Tech short for Biopharmaceutical New Technologies, had been founded
Speaker 1: to develop pharmaceutical cancer immunotherapy candidates using mRNA technology. In
Speaker 1: the company partnered with US based Visor Incorporated to develop
Speaker 1: mRNA based flu vaccines, and then the world was hit
Speaker 1: by a pandemic. Researchers everywhere began directing all their efforts
Speaker 1: toward developing a vaccine for the novel coronavirus. And all
Speaker 1: of this research that had come before is part of
Speaker 1: how mRNA vaccines got approved so fast. Let's talk about viruses.
Speaker 1: Viruses cannot reproduce on their own. They need to infect
Speaker 1: a host cell in a creature's body to begin the
Speaker 1: process which can make the creature sick. A for an
Speaker 1: mRNA vaccine for COVID nineteen to work, researchers needed to
Speaker 1: know which protein the virus was using to attack host cells,
Speaker 1: and for that they needed to crack COVID nineteen's genetic code.
Speaker 1: This process was simplified because the virus that causes COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen was similar to two other coronaviruses that had previously
Speaker 1: infected humans, mers and stars. By December thirty one, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: when China first reported pneumonia like infections from some kind
Speaker 1: of virus or group of similar viruses, Chinese researchers were
Speaker 1: already working to map the virus is genetic code. About
Speaker 1: two weeks later, on January twelve, they released the gene
Speaker 1: sequence data. This gave researchers everywhere the ammunition to start
Speaker 1: on a vaccine. For the article, this episode is based
Speaker 1: on How Stuff Works Folk with Paul Geptford, m D,
Speaker 1: Professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham
Speaker 1: and an expert in vaccine design. He said, we knew
Speaker 1: that the spike protein was the Achilles heel. M RNA
Speaker 1: vaccines are amenable to very rapid development. We got kind
Speaker 1: of lucky from that aspect. A week later, Maderna and
Speaker 1: Fightser made their vaccines. The companies were then able to
Speaker 1: propel ahead of drug companies developing traditional vaccines and move
Speaker 1: quickly into animal testing, and shortly thereafter human trials began.
Speaker 1: Both the Maderna and Fightser bio n tech vaccines are
Speaker 1: performing surprisingly well, and studies have shown that a full
Speaker 1: double dose of Fiser's or Maderna's vaccine provides and protection
Speaker 1: against the original virus, respectively. Yet barely half of all
Speaker 1: Americans are fully vaccinated. Getfort said. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: for vaccine hesitancy is that people have this misunderstanding that
Speaker 1: mrn A covid vaccines were developed so quickly and that
Speaker 1: in doing so we skipped safety evaluation, which is not
Speaker 1: true at all. This vaccine has been tested on incredible
Speaker 1: numbers of people, and it actually underwent the normal safety
Speaker 1: testing of any products, and now that it's under emergency
Speaker 1: use authorization, we have millions more safety data, actually more
Speaker 1: than any other product that we've had for a vaccine.
Speaker 1: These mr ANDA vaccines work so well because they induce
Speaker 1: multiple arms of defense in the immune system, Giptford explained.
Speaker 1: They induce the neutralization of antibodies, which I think of
Speaker 1: as spears because they can knock out the virus before
Speaker 1: you even get infected. They induce functional antibodies, which utilize
Speaker 1: cells to be more effective, and they induce T cell responses,
Speaker 1: both helper and killer cell responses, which are extremely important.
Speaker 1: T cells help prevent severe disease and death. Traditional evact
Speaker 1: scenes also create neutralizing antibodies and induce antibody responses, but
Speaker 1: aren't as good inducing T cell responses. So what does
Speaker 1: the future hold for mRNA technology. This is likely just
Speaker 1: the beginning. Back in two, clinical trials were already underway
Speaker 1: to test mRNA vaccines against several infectious diseases, including HIV, influenza, zica,
Speaker 1: and rabies. Other research is testing whether m RNA technology
Speaker 1: could prevent cancer from recurring. It turns out that mRNA
Speaker 1: vaccines can target almost any pathogen as long as you
Speaker 1: code for the right protein to stimulate the right immune response.
Speaker 1: That means scientists the diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, hepatitis B,
Speaker 1: and cystic fibrosis could all be prevented in the future
Speaker 1: with mRNA vaccines. Getfort said, these vaccines are remarkable even
Speaker 1: an older adults. They work really, really well, which is
Speaker 1: unusual for most any vaccine that we have, so that's
Speaker 1: just remarkable. Today's episode is based on the article will
Speaker 1: m RNA technology transform medicine beyond COVID nineteen on how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot Com, written by Jennifer Walker. Journey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with
Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Clang. Four
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