How Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine works: mRNA
In January 2020, cases of the new mysterious coronavirus start growing in China. In the end of June 2020, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the disease a pandemic, a handful of small biotech companies began scrambling to develop vaccines using an as-yet-unproven technology platform that relies on something called messenger RNA, usually shortened to mRNA. One was Moderna, which completed its first clinical batch of a vaccine by February and launched human trials in March, faster than any other vaccine in history. Another was BioNTech, a German company that later partnered with Pfizer to make a vaccine that…