RNA vaccines: past, present & future

RNA vaccines have been one of the success stories of the COVID-19 pandemic – but the platform has not always been so popular with vaccine developers. We caught up with RNA pioneer Drew Weissman to find out how RNA vaccines went from out in the cold to the hottest technology around – and why this is only the start.

Drew Weissman is a professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In collaboration with Dr Katalin Karikó, he discovered the ability of modified nucleosides in RNA to suppress activation of innate immune sensors and increase the translation of mRNA containing certain modified nucleosides. The nucleoside-modified mRNA-lipid nanoparticle vaccine platform that Dr Weissman’s lab created is used in the first two authorized COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. They continue to develop other vaccines that induce potent antibody and T cell responses with mRNA-based vaccines. In 2021, Drs Weissman and Karikó were awarded the prestigious Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for their work on modified mRNA vaccines. Dr Weissman is a member of The American Association of Immunologists, the American Federation for Clinical Research, and the Association of American Physicians. He received his graduate degrees from Boston University School of Medicine.

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