Chapters Transcript Video What Are mRNA Vaccines? Penn Medicine Explains vaccines are about to change the world again. For generations, vaccines have helped us live longer, safer lives protecting us from smallpox polio, measles and other devastating diseases. Now a new type of vaccine can make even more diseases from HIV to coronavirus is a thing of the past, vaccines usually work like this. A tiny part of a virus called an antigen is injected into your body. It's not enough to make you sick, but it's just enough to make your immune system notice your immune system then creates antibodies. Soldier cells that are trained to fight that particular antigens. Once this happens, your body will remember how to quickly produce more antibodies if needed. So if you're ever exposed to the real virus, your body will already know exactly how to defend itself. But what if you could skip that part and just train your immune system to make anybody's for specific diseases? That's what M RNA vaccines do. M. RNA stands for messenger RNA. It's a piece of genetic code that tells ourselves what to do, like make new proteins or repair damage. M. R. N. A. Is naturally found in all of ourselves. But in 2000 and five infectious disease experts at Penn medicine discovered how to modify M. R. N. A. To safely make ourselves create proteins similar to those found in some viruses. Once those proteins are made, our immune systems can then create antibodies for the virus. Today. This same technology is being used by scientists around the world to develop vaccines for all kinds of diseases, including corona viruses, that can cause future pandemics. Researchers at Penn medicine are developing M. RNA vaccines for diseases like herpes, HIV, sickle cell, anemia and even cancer. And as we continue to push for new breakthroughs in M. RNA technology, we're paving the way for a safer, healthier future for all of us. Published Created by
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