COVID Vaccines Approaching Finish Line

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Two COVID-19 vaccines that could arrive as soon as November use a promising new technique that experts say speeds up the development process. 

The new vaccines will be the first test to see if vaccines based on genetic code, rather than the germ itself, can be safe and effective. U.S.-based biotech company Moderna is developing one. The other is the product of a collaboration between German drugmaker BioNTech and U.S.-headquartered Pfizer. 


All previous vaccines have triggered the immune system with dead or weakened versions of a germ or parts of it. The active ingredient in each of the new vaccines is a piece of genetic code called mRNA. It instructs the body to produce one small piece of the virus. It does not cause illness, but it primes the immune system to fight off the real virus.

Producing enough vaccine for hundreds of millions of doses usually requires large, specialized biological manufacturing systems to grow the germ or its parts. The mRNA vaccines are quicker to develop in part because they do not rely on these complex systems. Plus, mRNA is a string of chemical building blocks that can be quickly modified to produce a new vaccine to combat a different germ. 

These are the first vaccines based on genetic code to be developed for human patients. Several veterinary vaccines using this technique are on the market, including immunizations against West Nile virus in horses, melanoma in dogs and a viral disease in salmon.