Development of vaccines and tests for SARS-CoV-2

3. Research on mRNA goes back 30 years

Messenger RNA vaccines were discovered and developed over the last thirty years. Synthetically produced RNA is introduced to the cells of the body by inoculation. This RNA provides the cells with the blueprint for proteins which in turn trigger an immune response against the virus. RNA that enters a cell carrying information for producing proteins is called messenger RNA –hence the abbreviation mRNA. In the early 1990s, the Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko carried out pioneering work on the development of therapeutic approaches using mRNA. Following a search for research funds that was initially fraught with problems, she succeeded in discovering a functioning immune response with the aid of synthetic mRNA together with research colleague Drew Weissman in the USA.

After her university career, Kariko continued the research at BioNTech. Her team was originally focused on vaccines against cancer, where mRNA specific for the occurrence of a cancer is produced for patients. But when the pandemic started, BioNTech and its partner Pfizer concentrated on the development of a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. Instead of developing everything from scratch, BioNTech looked for the correct mRNA sequence for the production of a protein that triggers an immune reaction to the virus.