mRNA:  Cure-All?

By Shlomo Maital

     For decades, perhaps centuries, medical science has sought to find drugs that mitigate or cure disease.   At last, an innovation has been born.  Instead – help the body’s immune system itself fight the invading disease.

     The breakthrough is in large part due to a chance conversation. U. of Pennsylvania immunologist Drew Weissman met a biochemist Katalin Kariko, an immigrant to the US from Hungary, at the photocopy machine.  They commiserated about lack of funding for their RNA research. Kariko had been working on RNA therapy for brain diseases and strokes, finding a decade-long stonewall by ‘experts’ who denied her funding.  Weissman, who studied vaccines, supported her research in his lab.  Together they won the 2023 Nobel Prize.

       Here is their basic idea.  RNA is ribonucleic acid.  mRNA (messenger RNA) is a template for producing proteins – in turn, vital for the body’s health.  Inside the cell, mRNA initiates production of specific proteins. 

        What if you could introduce mRNA to the body, that produced a protein that signalled ‘disease!!!!’, e.g. a protein from the COVID virus ‘spike’ protein?   The body would respond by producing antibodies – absorbing the mRNA into the cell, and the triggering the antibody production to fight the protein, hence the disease, and perhaps prevent it. 

         Whacko idea?  Sure.  Problem is, whenever any strange substance enters the body, it is destroyed by the body’s immune system very quickly.  How in the world do you smuggle mRNA into the cell – so it can do its blessed work?    Weissman and Kariko worked on this for years…while battling to gain funding from the skeptics.

         They made a breakthrough.  Wrap the mRNA in lipid (fat) nanoparticles.  The lipid molecule protects the delicate mRNA, until it can reach the desired destination within cells.   Weissman and Kariko proved the concept with animals.  They published their results, and vaccine companies (Moderna and BioNTech) quickly took up the cudgel, along (later) with giant Pfizer. 

           The resulting mRNA COVID vaccine saved many millions of lives.  Seven million people have died so far from COVID!  How many more would have died, had it not been for the mRNA vaccine?

           Now, scientists are realizing this may be almost a cure-all.  Introduce with mRNA a protein that is common to an illness (e.g. a cancer tumor?),  and spur the body to fight this invader by producing antibodies, that can destroy the invading cancer!   Rather than, say, chemotherapy, which essentially is high-powered poison!

            Thanks to the stubborn persistence of Weissman and Kariko, we may eventually have a powerful new weapon against cancer.  This is how science advances – wild ideas confront stonewall opposition,  until persistence, dogged hard work and brilliant creativity create a breakthrough.

            And by the way – Kariko is an immigrant – and so are 40% of the US Nobel Prize winners, in chemistry, physics and medicine, since 2000.