Think Like an Inventor

The Problem

Most traditional vaccines work by using inactive, weakened, or small fragments of a pathogen to trigger the immune system to create antibodies.

The issue with the traditional vaccine method is that it can take years to develop a vaccine, live pathogens are health risks for people with compromised immune systems and viruses can mutate rapidly.

This means you need to come up with a solution that: Makes vaccines: faster, safer and able to rapidly adjust to new virus strains.

Clues to how Katalin Karikó solved this problem.

Clue 1

Messenger RNA brings our cells the DNA instructions for making proteins.

Clue 2

Viruses work by attaching to a host cell, releasing its genetic information into the cell which then uses the cell to make new virus particles—some harmless and others harmful—out of proteins which assemble in the cell and then break free from the host cell to infect more cells.

Clue 3

The spike protein is a harmless piece of a virus.

Clue 4

mRNA can potentially instruct any cell in the body to make any kind of protein.

Katalin Karikó's solution using mRNA.

Karikó's solution to this problem is the hypothesis that mRNA instructions can be manipulated to make nonharmful proteins that come from a virus in the cell which would then generate immunity without ever introducing a pathogen into the body.

References:

https://www.bu.edu/articles/2021/how-drew-weissman-and-katalin-kariko-developed-mrna-technology-inside-covid-vaccines/

https://coronavirus.utah.gov/how-the-mrna-vaccine-works/

https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/virus-human2.htm

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