On 1 April 2020, ‘HORIZON: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine’ carried an article about the mRNA vaccines – first developed to fight cancer in humans, by the way.

It stressed the fact that only now (less than two years ago) are these vaccines beginning to be tested in humans, and that there are a lot of fairly basic unknowns which can only be answered through human trials. The following professor of microbiology was quoted many times in the piece:

Professor Isabelle Bekeredjian-Ding –

Chair of the IMI (Innovative Medicines Initiative) Scientific Committee

Head of Microbiology at Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, Federal Institute for Vaccines and Biomedicines, Langen, Germany

Fields of expertise

§ Immunology of infection & host-pathogen interaction

§ Clinical microbiology and infectious disease

§ Pharmaceutical microbiology

§ Regulation of vaccines and biomedicines

In relation to our innate immune response system, as humans, to the mRNA vaccine, Prof Isabelle said, twenty-one months ago:

1

“There is still a lot of work to be done to understand this response, the length of the protection it could give and whether there are any downsides.”

II

“What is really the current challenge, I think, is to understand whether these vaccines will really be able to mount a sufficiently protective immune response in the human and to understand, for example, which quantities of mRNA will be needed to do this.”

Prof Isabelle also stated that the mRNA is ‘easier and faster to produce” (than traditional vaccines) and is a “very unique way of making a vaccine and, so far, no such vaccine has been licenced for infectious disease.”