By Archa Fox, University of Western Australia and Harry Al-Wassiti, Monash University
The first mRNA vaccines approved for use in humans the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out around the world.
These vaccines deliver mRNA, coated in lipid (fat), into cells. Once inside, your body uses instructions in the mRNA to make SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins. The immune response protectsaround 95% of people vaccinated with either vaccine from developing COVID-19.
Such mRNA vaccines have many benefits. They are quick to design, so once the manufacturing platform is set up, mRNA vaccines can be designed to target different viruses, or variants, very quickly. The vaccine manufacturing is also fully synthetic, and doesn’t rely on living cells like chicken eggs, or cultured cell lines. So this technology is here to stay.
In other words, perhaps, the coronavirus virus uses long-term infections as a mutational testing ground. While inside one person, they can try out all these different combinations of mutations and figure out, through trial and error, which ones are best at evading the immune system or helping the virus become more infectious.
Nothing new and textbook virus evolution. However, the leap to the last sentence is not and is not the most likely outcome, rather the opposite, in my opinion, and very poorly worded.
And this process is likely happening again right now, worldwide, in other immunocompromised patients. Eventually, these new variants could mutate again and create even more dangerous forms of the virus.
Dr. Archa Fox is an Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow in the School of Human Sciences and the School of Molecular Sciences at the University of Western Australia, and an affiliate with the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. Archa completed her PhD with Professor Merlin Crossley (USYD, year 2000) on transcription factor interactions. She then carried out Postdoctoral work with Angus Lamond (Dundee, UK), where she discovered the paraspeckle, a new type of sub-nuclear body, built on a noncoding RNA. In 2006 she started her own research group at the (now) Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in WA. In 2015 she took up an academic position at the University of WA. Archa was given the emerging leader award of the Australian/NZ Society of Cell and Developmental Biology in 2017. She is treasurer of the Board of Lorne Genome Inc, President of the RNA Network of Australia and was recently elected as a Director of the Board for the RNA Society (2020-21).
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Researchers awarded $3.2M state funding to tackle COVID health challenges
Researchers from The University of Western Australia have been awarded $3.2 million in State Government funding to tackle COVID-19 health challenges, including creating a system using smartphones to identify children in need of urgent dental care, investigating how antibodies in breast milk protect babies from the virus and preparing a COVID-19 vaccine rollout for hard-to-reach communities.
UWA was successful in receiving 10 Future Health Research and Innovation (FHRI) Fund Focus Grants, announced today by State Health Minister Roger Cook.
The projects relate to infection prevention and control, surveillance, diagnostics and therapeutics as well as the direct or indirect impact of COVID-19 across a range of health conditions.