People just gave tiny, tiny doses of smallpox and hope that the very small dose of smallpox, delivered in a controlled fashion, would give you smallpox in just a very limited fashion, which would then make you immune. Sarah Fortune: Vaccination actually has a very long history. And this is sort of the next frontier of vaccine technology in which instead of giving the protein, you’re giving the sort of message, the map for how the body makes that protein, which is called mRNA, and you’re making the body make that protein.Īnna Fisher-Pinkert: Before we dive into the new mRNA vaccines, let’s back up a second and think about where vaccines started. So, many vaccines that people would have received in childhood are protein vaccines. And so the traditional way of giving parts of pathogens is to give the whole protein. And then we’ve moved to safer and safer iterations of that by whittling down the parts of the pathogen that we give to people. Vaccination started with actually the pathogen itself in some crippled form. Sarah Fortune: So when we vaccinate people, basically we take a little chunk of the pathogen, in this case SARS-CoV-2, and we give people (in a safe form) – we give people that little chunk of pathogen. I am the chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Chan School.Īnna Fisher-Pinkert: So what is an mRNA vaccine? And how is it different than the vaccines that I would have received in childhood for the measles or polio? Sarah Fortune: So my name is Sarah Fortune. This week, we’re better off with immunologist Sarah Fortune. We’re going to talk about what mRNA is, what it isn’t, and how this technology can help us fight other deadly diseases. If you or someone you know is not just thinking about when they will get the COVID-19 vaccine but whether they will get vaccinated – this is the episode for you. But after the excitement dissipated, a lot of people still had questions: What is the new mRNA technology behind these vaccines? What does it do inside our bodies? And how do scientists know that it’s safe? This was the moment we’d been waiting for – a breakthrough, a light at the end of the tunnel. When the first COVID-19 vaccine was given an Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA back in December, a lot of us, myself included, breathed an enormous sigh of relief. Sarah Fortune: And so what we’re going to learn out of all of this is sort of which platform has the ability to hit the “Goldilocks” spot.Īnna Fisher-Pinkert: I’m your host, Anna Fisher-Pinkert. and the people innovating to create public health solutions. But, actually, too much immunity is also bad, and the wrong flavor of immunity is also bad.Īnna Fisher-Pinkert.

Sarah Fortune: Too little immunity is bad. Chan School of Public Health – this is Better Off, a podcast about the biggest public health problems we face today. In this episode of “Better Off,” Harvard Chan School immunologist Sarah Fortune takes on common misconceptions about COVID-19 vaccines, and discusses the ways that mRNA technology could be used to create vaccines for diseases like TB and cancer.Īnna Fisher-Pinkert: From the Harvard T.H. Immunologist Sarah Fortune explains how these vaccines work, and how the mRNA platform could transform the prevention and treatment of deadly diseases. The technology that is helping us combat COVID-19 is also poised to help us tackle tough infectious and non-infectious diseases.

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