HEALTH × TECHNOLOGY

A Vaccine Written in RNA

2020 CE

History · Contemporary · Holocene · Meghalayan

Eleven months after a new coronavirus's genome was posted online, a randomized trial of 43,548 people showed that two doses of messenger RNA, wrapped in lipid nanoparticles and encoding the viral spike, prevented 95 percent of Covid-19 cases. The molecule was not a weakened germ or a protein but an instruction, written from the genome directly, manufacturable at typewriter speed. Six-month follow-up confirmed the protection, strongest against severe disease.

Why it matters

Vaccination, born with cowpox in 1796, changed substrate: from growing biology to writing information, which is why design took days where classical vaccines took years. The pandemic was the trial by fire of a technology decades in the making, from modified nucleosides to lipid couriers, and its success rewired the field, with mRNA now aimed at influenza, cancer and beyond. Speed of response to new pathogens has a new unit of measure.

Dating & uncertainty

The pivotal trial results were published in December 2020, eleven months after the viral genome was shared. The speed rested on decades of preparation: the discovery that modified nucleosides, pseudouridine and then N1-methylpseudouridine, tame RNA's immunogenicity, a finding its own field calls the Karikó paradigm, plus lipid nanoparticles to deliver the message.

Sources

1. Polack et al. (2020), New England Journal of Medicine · Safety and efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccinedoi:10.1056/nejmoa2034577
2. Thomas et al. (2021), New England Journal of Medicine · Safety and efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccine through 6 monthsdoi:10.1056/nejmoa2110345
3. Andries et al. (2015), Journal of Controlled Release · N1-methylpseudouridine-incorporated mRNA outperforms pseudouridine-incorporated mRNA by providing enhanced protein expression and reduced immunogenicity in mammalian cell lines and micedoi:10.1016/j.jconrel.2015.08.051

Our species’ history as one day

23:59:581.6 s before midnight

if the 315,000 years of Homo sapiens were compressed into a single day