“You could ultimately use mRNA to express any protein and perhaps treat almost any disease,” Moderna President Stephen Hoge told Chemical & Engineering News in September 2018. “It is almost limitless what it can do.”
The messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that is at the heart of the first COVID-19 vaccines to be approved is now being aimed at many other infectious diseases for which there are no currently effective inoculations. Moderna, for example, reports early work on vaccines aimed at HIV, Zika, Nipah, cytomegalovirus, and influenza. The German company CureVac, which should soon release the results of the clinical trials for its own mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, is working on vaccines against rabies, Lassa, yellow fever, and malaria, along with a universal flu vaccine.
This story is from the May 2021 edition of Reason magazine.
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This story is from the May 2021 edition of Reason magazine.
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