A New Technology Hiding in Covid Vaccines

virus news today. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed tougher regulations across a swath of England in an effort to rein in the mutant strain of coronavirus that has spread across the country. South Korea and the Philippines moved to temporarily suspend UK lights, while Japan is strengthening entry regulations for people traveling from Britain. Air travel from Britain to France resumed after a two day halt, although with eligibility

restrictions and a virus testing requirement. Italy uncovered the new COVID nineteen strain in an infected person with no apparent links to the UK Canada's public health authorities approved Maderna's coronavirus vaccine, the second to be licensed in the country that secured more doses per person than any other. Approval of the MODERNA shot will allow Canada to expand its

vaccination campaign beyond inoculation sites and urban centers. Canada's northern regions have specifically requested Maderna doses due to its less cumbersome refrigeration requirements. Fiser and partner Bio and Tech agreed to double the supply of their covid en vaccine to the US. The new agreement brings the total number of doses to be delivered to the US to two hundred million, the companies announced Wednesday. The drugmakers expect to deliver all

the doses by July. Also in the US, President Donald Trump injected confusion into the outlook for economic relief from the pandemic. On Tuesday night, the President demanded changes to the bipartisan legislation approved by Congress less than twenty four hours earlier, calling for an increase in the stimulus checks due to go out to most Americans to two thousand dollars from the agreed upon amount of six hundred dollars. If the President doesn't sign the legislation by December, government

funding will lapse after midnight that day. And now for today's main story. Both of the approved COVID nineteen vaccines, developed by Maderna and the Fiser and Bio and Tech Partnership, use genetic material called messenger RNA to effectively transform the body's own cells into vaccine factories. This approach is a first for vaccines. It relies on decades of clinical research into whether messenger RNA technology can be used to treat a broad range of ailments, from cancer to the seasonal flu.

I spoke to Naomi Krasky about whether the validation of this breakthrough technology during COVID nineteen could bring about a whole new field of medicine. The rapid development of the FISER and the MODERNA vaccines has brought a lot of attention to m RNA or messenger rn, a technology which hasn't been used before in vaccines. I was hoping you might give us just a maybe brief overview how messenger

RNA vaccines work. So these vaccines, I mean, you're right, this is a new type of vaccine, and they used this genetic material called messenger RNA. This is a single stranded molecule that's complementary to one of the DNA strands of a gene. This genetic material is essentially what it does is transform the body's own cells into vaccine factories. And this is something that has been looked at for a couple of decades. It took quite a while to

figure out how to use this effectively. It has been studied for a range of potential uses UM and you know wound up UM being of effective for the first time UM in clinical experiments for COVID nineteen. So maybe you can break down what gives m RNA technology the edge over conventional approaches to developing vaccines UM, either in terms of COVID nineteen or with regard to other diseases. So in terms of COVID nineteen, this was sort of an ideal test case in some ways for m RNA vaccines.

The thing that really can make mRNA vaccines different UM. There are one obvious thing that's different about them is that they can be very quick to develop. And so for you know, when COVID nineteen emerged, these companies Moderna and BioNTech were able to look at the sequence the genetic sequence for the virus in January and start working on vaccines at that point, and really then with unprecedented speed they were able to come up with good vaccine candidates,

test those candidates. I mean, in the case of bion Tech, they even did UM early human trials on a range of different candidates. UM. Their early stage trial was sort of a big science experiment in itself to see which of these candidates might work the best UM and then do massive late stage studies with tens of thousands of

people all on in a really compressed timeline. And part of the reason that they could do that is because the early part of coming up with a potential vaccine is very quick with m R and A therapeutics compared to other types of conventional vaccines. Now, you mentioned that the use of m R and A technology had been undergoing research for many other diseases, obviously prior to the emergence of COVID nineteen. I was just wondering if you might go into some of the other diseases that mRNA

technology could be applied to. One big potential use, and actually the main use that the Fiser partner, BioNTech, had been looking at prior to covid and is cancer. And this is you know, a different way of using an m RNA vaccine than in an infectious disease. In this case kind of put simply, UM, you're trying to alert the immune system to the different things that are in cancer cells so that the immune system will attack the cancer. It's it's using the mr ANDA vaccine as a therapeutic

instead of as a vaccine defense against infectious disease. If that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, this is something that has been looked at for two decades UM and it's really a potential coming to fruition um in the next couple of years as well if it works, and whether it works is still still unclear. Just because this type of vaccine works for the coronavirus doesn't necessarily mean that

it will work against a tumor. And beyond cancer, what are some of the other applications UM besides the coronavirus as far as treating diseases. So one that really obvious application would be any other type of vaccine or infectious disease. One potential use and this is something that's already been looked at UM is for seasonal flu and actually I want to say it was two years ago. UM. A year and a half ago, Visor and BioNTech made a deal together to work on MR ANDNA vaccines for seasonal flu.

It's easy to understand how mRNA vaccines might work well for right because the flu virus virus has changed a little bit every year, and this is why flu vaccines need to be kind of tweaked every year, and they'll put out a new flu vaccine every year, and there is UM. You know, this takes time to do, and so you have MR and A vaccines and you can compress this time period of coming up with a vaccine candidate. It decreases the amount of guessworth that you might have

to do. And so potentially UM they might be able to make flu vaccines that will be more effective than flu vaccines that we've had up to now. And that's not UM, that's not unsubstantial. So Messenger RNA might also

help produce vaccines against viruses that have eluded conventional vaccine approaches. UM. One program that Moderna is doing UM is a vaccine against a virus that can cause birth defects when it's passed from pregnant mother to UM to an unborn child, and scientists have been trying to come up with a vaccine against this virus for half a century, and it's possible that the m R and A technology will will

you know, make this possible for the first time. We could see a late stage patient trial starting next year with this approach. Now that we have seen the use and application of m R and A technology when it comes to the COVID nineteen vaccine with Fiser and Maderna and the approval thereof, has the development essentially of an m R and A technology based COVID nineteen vaccine affected the timeline of other treatments that are based on the same technology. It's funny and that you should ask that

because it's sort of a two prompt answer. Um Like, On one hand, I think that seeing this technology be proved in such a public setting has definite, nearly increased interest in it, and so you know, increased interest leads to increased investment um, increased willingness um for funders to back this kind of thing um, so that could push

timelines forward. On the other hand, you know, the pandemic itself has also in some cases made it harder to do clinical trials and made it more complicated to do clinical trials. UM. So you know that that could have a bit of the opposite effect UM in cancer. UM we could see initial efficacy data from patient studies as soon as the end of next year or early in bion Tech has told me, so we could begin to see a little bit of UM, a little bit of a sense pretty soon of of whether this has a

broader utility. Looking ahead, what are some other potential application sans for m R and A technology. So some of these potential future uses I'm just gonna say, sound a little bit like science fiction for now, and they these are things that that maybe could work UM far into the future. UM, this is not something that's going to come next year or the year after next, or even you know, just a few years into the future. Right.

But that having been said, bion Tech is doing early research into whether m R and A could be used to reprogram cells for regenerative medicine, and it's it's also possible in the future that scientists might be able to design targeted nanoparticles that can accumulate in certain types of

tissues such as bone marrow. Drew Wiseman, who's an immunologist, at the University of Pennsylvania and who was one of the early people to really to really look at this technology, told us um And this might allow treatments for genetic diseases such as sickle cell anemia and with maybe even as a single ivy injection of a targeted therapy. Again, this is these are potential uses that could be far in the future, but just gives a little bit of a sense of the potential of this approach if it

does indeed work in other disease areas. That was not only Kraski and that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com, slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. And there's a quick note for our listeners. The show will be taking a brief

break this Friday, December. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by to for fourhead Jordan gas Bouret, Magnus Henrickson, and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Naomi Kresky, original music by Leo sidrin Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.