Understanding mRNA Covid-19 vaccines

Re:Understanding mRNA Covid-19 vaccines by throw9678 on Saturday December 12, 2020 @09:07PM (#25403682)

As mentioned in the Nature article and in another poster's comment[1], MRNA vaccines have been known for a while now (decade+ ?), and studied on animals, with some limited phase I / phase II human studies. But nobody's gone through a full phase III before covid hit, so that kind of a wide fan-out is new and exceptional because of the emergency nature of the disease.

But I don't think they're unconcerned. I think it's a combination of lack of decades-long longitudinal studies, and also that previous phase I / II studies haven't throw up significant red flags.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25403560

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Re:Understanding mRNA Covid-19 vaccines by reader_1000 on Sunday December 13, 2020 @05:47AM (#25405652)

> But nobody's gone through a full phase III before covid hit,

Do you know why nobody did not conduct phase III before? Is it because of safety concerns or lack of necessity since concerned disease disappeared?

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Re:Understanding mRNA Covid-19 vaccines by detaro on Sunday December 13, 2020 @06:05AM (#25405729)

AFAIK some of the breakthroughs in the delivery mechanisms are relatively new. Some of the companies now making a covid vaccine were talking about running a trial for a flu vaccine in the next few years, but obviously that was far less urgent and all the steps (getting permission, getting participants, actually running the study without "unlimited" money, ...) would take longer.

(mRNA would be a good candidate for a flu vaccines because they are fast to produce, which in theory reduces the amount of guessing needed to make the "right" flu vaccine for the year, but of course a) flu vaccines already are a thing even if sometimes wrong and b) a flu vaccine isn't given as high priority overall)

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