For most of us, Covid may now be nothing more than an occasional nuisance. But the mRNA technology behind many of the vaccines is going from strength to strength. Matthew Partridge reports
It’s easy to forget the relief we all felt at the results showing that the Covid vaccine was effective, followed by the rollout of the jabs. Barely three years later, we are experiencing “vaccine fatigue”, with demand for jabs hitting an “all-time low” last autumn as the pandemic “moves into the endemic phase”, says Andy Acker, a portfolio manager at Janus Henderson. The scramble for Covid jabs is now behind us. But the lesson to take from the experience is “how transforming” the mRNA biotechnology that underpinned many of the jabs was, says Kate Leaman, chief market analyst at AvaTrade. Indeed, that technology is set to shake up how we treat everything from the flu to severe respiratory infections, and even cancers and autoimmune diseases. The companies “at the forefront of mRNA technology are poised for significant growth”.
The mRNA revolution
The best way to think of mRNA is as an “information molecule” – it carries information encoded in our genes from the nucleus into the main body of our cells, where it determines what proteins are made, explains Pad Chivukula, the chief scientific officer of biotechnology firm Arcturus Therapeutics. Proteins are the building blocks that enable our bodies to function in a normal manner. Sometimes things go wrong, however, and the body makes faulty proteins, which causes disease. The mRNA technology tries to correct this error by introducing specially designed mRNA into the body in order to get it to make the right proteins.
The existence of mRNA has been known about for decades, but “up until recently there has been a huge amount of scepticism about whether it could be used in a practical way to treat illness”, says Chivukula. The good news is that the perseverance of Chivukula and others like him is being rewarded and in the 11 years since he started to work in this area attitudes among investors and scientists have started to change. Venture capitalists are pouring large sums into start-ups focusing on mRNA technology, and larger pharmaceutical and biotech firms are starting to pay significant sums for these start-ups, especially in the US.
Luke Barrs of Goldman Sachs Asset Management thinks there are two big forces driving the mRNA revolution. The first is what he calls the “wider genetics revolution”, which has not
