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Whiterabbit-- t1_j9uhkgw wrote

Reply to comment by sciolycaptain in Does the common flu vaccine offer any buffer against H5N1 (Bird Flu)? by Esc_ape_artist

why is mrna shorter time to market?

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BlueOmega169 t1_j9ulafx wrote

The development pipeline is substantially shorter, if you can produce an mRNA vaccine you can theoretically produce any mRNA vaccine. Once you have the genetic sequence of the strain you're interested in, preparing one mRNA transcript is (more or less) the same as preparing any other. The same is not true for protein expression or live attenuated virus preparation. Preparing the vaccine at scale faster means getting to testing sooner, and testing sooner means results sooner.

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sciolycaptain t1_j9uoxo9 wrote

The current influenza vaccines are made by incubating the virus in fertilized chicken eggs. That step takes time. and hundreds of millions of eggs.

With mRNA vaccines, you can just throw templates, nucleotides, and enzymes into a container and get more mRNA for the vaccine (extremely oversimplified)

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LonelyGnomes t1_j9vb0nr wrote

I feel like that’s exactly how I’ve done PCR every time (plus some buffer and magnesium). It’s kinda magic.

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