The mass rollout of COVID-19 vaccines may seem to have been relatively quick, but the development of the groundbreaking mRNA technology used in the vaccine has been in development for decades before. Back in the 1970s, mRNA research began making headway, but due to burdensome regulations no releases of the mRNA tech would happen until nearly forty years later with the COVID vaccine. Fortunately, philanthropists who voluntarily donated to the researchers as well as investors who saw an opportunity for huge developments kept the studies of the technology afloat.
In spite of the regulatory barriers placed in front of them, researchers persisted in investing in mRNA approaches, with many of the failures of HIV actually helping scientists understanding the new field of research. This backlog of history made the switch to addressing COVID-19 extremely quick. With the new identifying information of COVID being swapped in, scientists were able to use all the research that had been invested in from before to be applied to the new epidemic, allowing for a mass release of vaccines to be released in less than a year.
Now that the barriers to market have been released for mRNA vaccines, the possibilities for future investment and problem solving are numerous. The years of investment in spite of permission being denied has paid of massively for the current epidemic and could prove to help us solve many other diseases we've struggled with for years. As reported in The Atlantic:
But mRNA’s story likely will not end with COVID-19: Its potential stretches far beyond this pandemic. This year, a team at Yale patented a similar RNA-based technology to vaccinate against malaria, perhaps the world’s most devastating disease. Because mRNA is so easy to edit, Pfizer says that it is planning to use it against seasonal flu, which mutates constantly and kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world every year. The company that partnered with Pfizer last year, BioNTech, is developing individualized therapies that would create on-demand proteins associated with specific tumors to teach the body to fight off advanced cancer. In mouse trials, synthetic-mRNA therapies have been shown to slow and reverse the effects of multiple sclerosis. “I’m fully convinced now even more than before that mRNA can be broadly transformational,” Özlem Türeci, BioNTech’s chief medical officer, told me. “In principle, everything you can do with protein can be substituted by mRNA.”
