NOBEL
PRIZE FOR MEDICINE - SCI & TECH
News:
2023 Nobel Prize in
Medicine or Physiology: What are mRNA vaccines and how do they work? |
Explained
What's
in the news?
●
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine has been awarded to Katalin
Karikó and Drew Weissman for their research that enabled the development of
mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
●
The prize was announced by The Royal
Swedish Academy of Science on October 2, 2023.
mRNA
Vaccine:
●
An mRNA vaccine is a type of vaccine that
uses a copy of a molecule called
messenger RNA (mRNA) to produce an immune response.
●
The vaccine delivers molecules of
antigen-encoding mRNA into immune cells, which use the designed mRNA as a
blueprint to build foreign protein that would normally be produced by a
pathogen (such as a virus) or by a cancer cell.
●
Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines teach our
cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response inside our
bodies.
Benefit
of m-RNA vaccine:
●
mRNA vaccines do not use any live virus.
●
mRNA vaccines cannot cause infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 or other
viruses as it doesn't enter into the nucleus of the cell.
●
They do
not affect or interact with our DNA in any way.
●
The mRNA and the spike protein do not last long in the body.
●
Like all vaccines, mRNA vaccines benefit
people who get vaccinated by giving them protection against diseases like
COVID-19 without risking the potentially serious consequences of getting sick.
Recent
mRNA vaccines: The GEMCOVAC-OM,
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19
vaccines are messenger RNA vaccines, also called mRNA vaccines.