834 B
Pre-Lab Project 6
A key concept from the video "mRNA Vaccines" is how mRNA style vaccines differ from traditional vaccines. While traditional vaccines can take years to develop, mRNA vaccines are quick to develop.
Traditional vaccines inject a weakened version of the actual virus, while mRNA vaccines only inject messenger RNA (mRNA). mRNA makes the body produce a small part of the virus instead of the whole virus. This way, the immune system can learn about the specific antigen and create corresponding antibodies.
Since traditional vaccines inject actual viruses or virus fragments, a full immune response can be triggered, causing an array of side effects. With mRNA vaccines, on the other hand, side-effects are minimized.
My question is why do the mRNA induced antigens not cause an immune response with side-effects?