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“We will do everything possible so that people have an effective and efficient vaccine,” biochemist Katalin Karikó told Kossuth Radio about the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine. According to him, American healthcare workers can be vaccinated in late November, and the American / German coronavirus vaccine can reach Europe and Hungary in the spring.
It is a completely new technology-based vaccine, based on a joint patent by Karikó and the American Drew Weismann from 2005. In addition to Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna in the United States is also developing its vaccine using this.
The essence of the Carlo-Weismann method is that the vaccine does not contain live, attenuated or killed viruses, nor is it DNA-based. Instead, it uses modified messenger RNA (mRNA). Karikó, who lives in the United States – who left the Szeged Center for Biological Research in 1985 due to downsizing and, had he stayed, would have been a mediocre researcher – is the vice president of the manufacturer BionNTEch.
Ring said the benefit of his vaccine is the fact that only one of the virus’s more than 30 proteins is delivered to the body, preparing it for the virus to try to infect later. They also want to prevent the vaccine from causing inflammation in the body. According to Kariko, this is a much safer method than before, it cannot be infected, it cannot be combined with other viruses in our body. Furthermore, all parts of the vaccine are natural and do not contain chemical modifications that would not occur in us. When asked, he said there were no serious side effects from the vaccine during testing.
Karikó’s three Hungarian employees also spoke at the fair, who also worked on the vaccine. For example, it was necessary to find out how to introduce RNA into the body, to which molecule to bind so that it did not break down. Experts had not previously anticipated that the vaccine could be more than 90 percent effective, but Pfizer / BionNTech and Moderna also reported such high percentages toward the end of Phase 3 clinical trials. This is much higher than for vaccines. against influenza.
Pfizer / BionNTech has already submitted its license application to the US authorities. 200 million doses have already been manufactured and will be marketed as soon as they are licensed. It is planned to produce 1.5 billion next year. Your piece will cost $ 30 and you will also be given a booster dose.
Norbert Pardi, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, says they are already working on further improvements. The big disadvantage of the pioneer vaccine so far is that it has to be stored especially in the cold, minus 70 degrees, which also makes it very difficult to transport. Moderna’s vaccine stops at minus 20 degrees, and even lasts for 30 days in the refrigerator. What Pardi is focusing on now is that by using the RNA-based platform, you don’t have to inject the vaccine every year, you can protect it even if the virus is going through a significant change. This is called a universal vaccine.
Pardi said the current one was the third coronavirus epidemic in the past 20 years, and the previous two did not escalate into pandemics. “Let there be no doubt, we have a very good chance that there will be another coronavirus epidemic in 5 or 10 years, and it is likely that the current vaccine will not protect or protect enough against the new one. So, just like with the flu you worked on before the coronavirus, you want to combine the RNAs that encode the different coronavirus spike proteins into one vaccine and immunize with it. “So if a new coronavirus arrives in the future, which is, let’s say, still in a bat now and has so-called pandemic potential, it can jump to another host, even a human, in Hungarian, then we will have a so-called prototype vaccine. against him, he has a good chance of protection. Even if he doesn’t protect perfectly, we can adapt to him, “explained Karikó’s colleague.
The mRNA method would also be used in drugs. There has been advanced research in cardiology and oncology, but the coronavirus vaccine has now preceded it. At the same time, the fight against the epidemic has given a great boost to the research of the method.
By the way, Karikó spoke at length about how he started his career in Szeged in the spring, and the G7 also interviewed him in March, and he discussed his research in detail here.
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