Experts from the Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine SB RAS are today developing an mRNA vaccine for influenza based on the seminal paper by biochemists Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman. considered worthy Nobel Prize. Grigory Stepanov, head of the genome editing laboratory of the SB RAS Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine, development director of the Biosan and Biolabmix group of companies, told socialbites.ca.
“We are developing the mRNA version of the flu vaccine. We have started an experiment on mice, we want to check whether the structure of the mRNA is assembled correctly, whether it is delivered to the cells correctly. We have another year full of tests ahead of us,” explained Stepanov.
According to the scientist, developers of the SB RAS vaccine are guided by basic principles articleIt was written in 2005 by Nobel laureates Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman. They were awarded for developing a method to synthesize mRNA, which forms the basis of Western COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna.
According to Stepanov, the Russian mRNA flu vaccine will be created on the basis of a universal mRNA platform developed at the Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine of the SB RAS.
“The development of the universal structure of artificial mRNA will make it possible in the future to change some of the nucleotides responsible for which virus the drug acts against and direct the effect of the vaccine to other pathogens,” Stepanov said.
Russian scientists before appreciated The Nobel Prize was awarded to mRNA vaccines against Covid-19.