Potential COVID-19 Vaccines: What to Know
Two vaccines have shown great promise recently to be successful against COVID-19. Pfizer and Moderna have reported that their vaccines showed close to 95% efficacy in their recent vaccine trials. These vaccines will provide immunity to covid-19, so that those who are vaccinated will not get sick, or if illness does occur, then the symptoms are less severe than they would be without the vaccine. Both vaccines are mRNA vaccines, and if approved by the FDA, they would be the first vaccines made available using this method. An interesting feature of the novel coronavirus has been its spike protein and this is what both vaccines are targeting to build immunity to COVID-19. The sequence data of the novel coronavirus shows the part of the sequence that corresponds to the spike protein and a 3D visual representation of the spike protein sequence in is Protein Data Bank. In “mRNA vaccines — a new era in vaccinology,” Pardi and others explain that vaccines made with mRNA have the potential to be quickly scaled up for widespread distribution as well as being highly effective, which is why they hold so much hope for preventing and alleviating illness due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
If you are interested in learning more about vaccines, here are a few of the resources that you can check out from the UI Libraries. You can search for more in InfoHawk+ and contact lib-sciences@uiowa.edu for help.
RNA vaccines : methods and protocols
Long Shot : Vaccines for National Defense
PBS NOVA video: Vaccines—Calling the Shots