In 1989, when Katalin Karikó submitted her first grant application to develop messenger RNA-based gene therapy, she knew she had a game-changing technology in her hands. But the Hungarian biochemist, then a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, could only dream of using mRNA in humans. In theory an almost perfect platform to make drugs and vaccines, mRNA was stacked with practical problems that would keep it away from clinical use for decades.
Then, at the end of 2019, a strange new infectious disease appeared in Wuhan and spread quickly across the planet, changing the world and sending countries and companies racing for a medical treatment that would stop the pandemic’s illness and fatalities. mRNA has become one of the saviour technologies of the COVID era; now, that success is just the first step in a transformation in how we might recognise – and cure – everything from the flu to cancer.
The concept behind mRNA technology is strikingly simple. mRNA – which stands for messenger ribonucleic acid – is a single-stranded chain of nucleotides. In an organism, it acts as a messenger, a short-lived intermediary that communicates the information contained in our genes to the ribosomes. These are the cell’s protein factories, which read the code and translate it into a protein.
Scientists have learned to transcribe a genetic sequence from a string of DNA to a string of mRNA. A synthetic mRNA sequence with the right blueprint can be turned into
