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
