Eric Spitznagel, New York Post, Health, March 25, 2023.
Scientists Edo Kon and Dan Peer from Tel Aviv University and the Israel Institute for Biological Research announced that they’d created a single-dose vaccine that could effectively protect people from Yersinia pestis bacterium. Haven’t heard of it? That’s because it’s better known (at least in the Middle Ages) as the plague — a disease that still kills thousands in Asia and parts of Africa each year.
The plague might not be something that keeps you up at night, but there are likely plenty of infectious diseases that do, and somewhere in the world, scientists are working (and getting amazingly close) to developing mRNA-based vaccines that could potentially make the disease you fear the most obsolete.
Blakney describes it as a RNAissance. ”Scientists are exploring the use of mRNA for many different applications,” she says, not just in treating cancer and COVID but “enzyme replacement therapies, immunotherapies, you name it.” These medicines “will be game changers in the years to come,” she says.
It may seem like these advances have arrived staggeringly fast, but researchers have been experimenting with mRNA treatments for decades. “Scientists first started studying mRNA vaccines in 1990,” says Blakney. “The first RNA vaccine clinical trial was started in 2009.” Full article
