2020 saw a staggering achievement: the use of a new technology to develop not one but two extremely effective vaccinations for COVID-19 in less than a year’s time, potentially saving millions of lives. Instead of vaccines which release a weakened or inactivated germ into our bodies to spur an immune response, messenger RNA vaccines get cells to make a protein that causes an immune response in bodies.
For months, researchers have said messenger RNA vaccines have enormous potential to treat other diseases — and last week, the Academic Times reported a breakthrough on malaria, which kills more than 400,000 people a year, mostly children in Africa. Human tests have not begun yet, but co-inventor Richard Bucala, a Yale physician, and other experts say lab results suggest the vaccine…
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