During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, mRNA vaccines have become the biggest hot spot in the pharmaceutical industry and created a myth of Moderna's revenue growth of 47 times.
As the mRNA vaccine industry gradually matures, many industry insiders are exploring other roles of this new technology. Some industry insiders even believe that the "mRNA therapy revolution" is coming in the next decade.
mRNA What is the origin of this black technology that many people don’t understand? What potential does its future have?
Technology outpost will have an in-depth understanding with you today.
1.35 new technology
mRNA technology is actually not new to the industry insiders. In 1987, Robert Malone, a graduate student at the Solk Institute of Biology in La Jolla, USA, discovered the role of mRNA. He mixed mRNA with fat droplets and found that it can make cells produce protein .
In the following years, many researchers believed that this characteristic gave mRNA the potential to become a vaccine or drug carrier, and they have invested in the first wave of mRNA research and development.
Simply put, mRNA is a very important intermediate product in the human body that genes produce proteins. Human cells must have mRNA reference to produce various protein products.
mRNA vaccine is using this feature to use mRNA to carry information of viral characteristic proteins, allowing the body to generate the key characteristics of the virus and trigger an immune response, so that we can gain the ability to resist the virus without really injecting the virus.
This is safer and more efficient than the traditional injection of inactivated viruses and attenuated viruses.
2. The industrial gap from principle to application
The principle is very simple, but it takes countless researchers' efforts to implement it. In the past 20 years since the birth of mRNA technology, the human immune system that everyone wants to use is the biggest enemy of the application of mRNA technology.
Because the human body has mRNA itself, it will also have an immune response to the mRNA injected from the outside world. These drawings are taken away by factory security guards before they can be used to produce proteins. In addition, the mRNA itself is not stable and will naturally decompose after a period of time. There are also a lot of problems to be overcome in how to send it to the cells.
Until 2005, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Drew Weisman and Kataline Carrico modified the RNA and replaced the uridine base in the RNA with a structure that is similar but different, and finally successfully bypassed the high wall of the human immune system.
This discovery stimulated the confidence of American researchers. Moderna was established with the support of the Flagship venture capital fund we introduced. It was not officially announced in 2010. This name originated from the abbreviation of modified mRNA. However, at that time, Moderna's main focus was not on vaccines, but on heart disease.
At the same time, German researchers established BioNTech, another well-known mRNA company today, and they focused on cancer treatment.
3. From questioning to the rise of
In the ten years since the birth of the two companies, mRNA technology has been in the process of optimization, from better modifying the structure to introducing lipid wrapping to preventing the rapid decomposition of mRNA, the technological maturity has been constantly improving, but there has never been mature clinical applications.
even many people questioned the inverse of modifying mRNA. It is meaningless to spend a lot of resources and energy, thinking that mRNA is on a dead end.
It was not until the COVID-19 pandemic that the huge value of mRNA was seen by people. It is not necessary to say that the high immune response of the vaccine is, the first phase III trial data of mRNA has reached 90%, which is comparable to many mature traditional vaccines.
But what makes the industry pay more attention to is its development efficiency.According to public reports, the first mRNA new crown vaccine was manufactured after 42 days of knowing the genetic sequence of the new crown virus. It took 4 months to complete the human test. This speed is called the speed of light by many people.
Most people will emphasize to you that it takes an average of 7 years to apply the vaccine research and development clinical trials. The mRNA vaccine approval is so fast, in fact, there is the impact of the U.S. FDA emergency authorization, but putting aside these, it takes 3 months for traditional methods to create influenza vaccines that do not require approval. mRNA shortens this process to almost one-third.
can carry different things and quickly enter the R&D stage. This is the focus of mRNA that has attracted everyone's attention.
4.mRNA platformization accelerates
industry leader Moderna has already had a new plan to apply mRNA technology to the treatment of influenza , heart failure and other treatments; BioNTech has also opened up a new track and plans to design an mRNA malaria vaccine by the end of 2022.
cbinsights statistics show that as of 2021, there are more than 500 mRNA treatment projects in the world that are undergoing clinical trials, testing treatments in more than 20 disease categories, among which cancer is the most concerned area.
Some industry insiders believe that using today's mRNA new crown vaccine experience, quickly find the specific protein structure of patients' cancer and tumors through gene sequencing, and using mRNA vaccines to allow the body to form specific recognition capabilities, which can eliminate cancer and tumors at the lowest cost.
British Medical Journal 2021 statistics have been made that many mRNA cancer vaccine treatment plans are already in the Phase II clinical trial stage. These vaccines often contain more than 30 different mRNA sequences. The combined use of multiple vaccines works together, and there are still many new challenges to be solved.
technology outpost has learned a lot. It seems that it will take some time to find a new breakthrough in cancer treatment mRNA, and vaccines are the fruits that are rushing to pick in the industry.
During the live broadcast of the special training camp on Thursday, we will continue to analyze the cutting-edge progress of mRNA with you to see what new trends there are in this cutting-edge technology, and which biomedical technologies will be integrated with it to create new sparks. Welcome to lock in the live broadcast room in advance. See you on Thursday~
and above are today's content. I hope you can gain something. If you like our program, please share it with your friends. This will be very helpful to us. See you more exciting content tomorrow~
Technology Outpost, lighted up for you every day.
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