Home Journal List The Pakistan Journal of Medicine and Dentistry Volume 9 Article Details

From Viral Vaccines to Messenger RNA Vaccines

Abstract

Today, the swiftness of epidemics of infectious disease is alarming. To date vaccines have been an enormous success for not only preventing but completely eradicating a number of malicious infectious disease like small pox, rubella, mumps, measles and polio as well as decreasing the burden of diseases like tetanus, measles and diphtheria etc. Vaccination has been the hallmark of disease control for hundreds of years since it was first tested by English physician Edward Jenner in 1796 and further validated by Louis Pasteur through their work on smallpox vaccine. Vaccines function by imitating an infectious agent, and by doing so, train our bodies to respond more rapidly and effectively against them. They are either a toxin or surface protein that is identical to the offending microorganism and are made from a killed or inactivated part of the pathogen. By injecting this agent our body achieves a crash course in recognizing the agent as a threat, enabling the immune system to combat the pathogen, destroy them, and lastly, protect our bodies from a future encounter. Currently, however, the world isfacing a pandemic of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and this call for a speedy effective way of controlling the threat of infectious diseases. Anew class of vaccines that are “Ribonucleic acid (RNA) based vaccines” can prove to be more efficacious. Compared to conventional vaccines, this is more vigorous, multi-purpose, yet, equally effective having many advantages such as rapid development (no growth facilities or eggs or insects required), being part of biological sequence of our own blue print Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). That is no rejection problem and has multiple utility; it can be antibody or tumor antigen or an enzyme with a capability to replace an enzyme of inborn error. RNA imitates viral infections in several aspects and induces significantly strong immune responses. RNA sensors, in addition, can be triggered to meet the requirements of the individual vaccines by designing RNA-based adjuvants. Above all RNA can be easily produced invitro in a cell-free system.

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