#When did pfizer announce vaccine how to

Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech also had equivalent results in their phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials, which are smaller scale, Kedl says.

He’s also an advisor for BioNTech, the company that partnered with Pfizer on this vaccine. “I would assume their efficacy is probably going to be similar,” says Drew Weissman, the University of Pennsylvania immunologist who conducted the research behind mRNA vaccines. The Moderna vaccine candidate, which should release initial data soon, is also based on mRNA. “This mRNA platform seems to be very promising,” she says. But the Pfizer data - assuming it holds up on further evaluation from outside experts and the FDA - is a strong proof of concept. Rosemary Rochford, also an immunologist at the University of Colorado, says she was initially skeptical they’d work as well as some other types of vaccines, like ones made from inactivated viruses. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never approved one for use in humans. However, until now, they’ve been largely experimental. For years, they’ve been heralded as the future of vaccine development. Gene-based vaccines are relatively simple to develop and manufacture. When the immune system encounters those spikes, it learns to recognize and block them. The vaccine spurs the human body to make copies of that protein.

#When did pfizer announce vaccine how to

The vaccine includes a specific piece of mRNA that contains instructions for how to make the spike protein of the coronavirus, which is the tiny bit that lets it bind to human cells. mRNA carries instructions inside of cells and tells them to build proteins.

Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine is made from genetic material called mRNA. “It’s extremely encouraging, in my view, not only for the Pfizer vaccine, but broadly speaking for the platform,” says Ross Kedl, an immunologist at the University of Colorado. The data is still preliminary and hasn’t been examined by independent researchers, but it’s good news for both this specific vaccine and for the other coronavirus vaccines in the pipeline - especially the ones that are based on the same genetic technology. Pfizer and BioNTech announced this week that their vaccine was 90 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in clinical trials.