A commentary of Messenger RNA vaccines in MIT Technology Review 2021

Abstract

One hundred years after the 1918 influenza pandemic, the world has seen another major outbreak on a global scale. This one is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), an enveloped positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus. According to the World Health Organization, as of June 17, 2021, there have been 176,693,988 confirmed cases of human coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), resulting in 3,830,304 deaths. Vaccines are the most effective way to prevent viral infection. During this pandemic, the speed at which the vaccine progressed from research and development to application was unprecedented. As of June 15, 2021, a total of 2,377,780,590 doses of various vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 have been administered worldwide. These vaccines included the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, which became famous upon their debut application in the real world and was listed as one of the ‘10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2021’ by MIT Technology Review.①① Original source in Chinese: H. Qi, mRNA, Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China. 35 (3) (2021) 402-403.