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What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

blogs.sciencemag.org

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Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#3
> So if you’re going to give patients an mRNA injection and you don’t want to set off alarm bells in the innate immune system, you’re going to have to carefully engineer your sequences at the very least.

Isn't that what substituting uracil by pseudouridine solves?

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#4

Derek Lowe's articles during covid have been a huge help trying to navigate the coronavirus hellscape we have been in. It's great to see him start to talk post-covid applications of medicine as things maybe wind down a bit. Delta+ willing

Delta+ and the next variant after that just in time for school in the Fall and a bunch of unvaccinated kids.

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#5
I wrote a long essay about the same topic and came to similar conclusions as Derek Lowe: https://trevorklee.com/are-mrna-therapies-the-future-of-phar...

One thing that I'd like to emphasize is how unbelievably tiny mRNA therapeutics have to be. It's probably around 30 mg, and it's hard to do it more than once every few weeks, at least judging by siRNA therapeutics (which have similar immune issues).

30 mg is really tiny. It's hard to come up with a meaningful therapeutic in such a small amount of material. People have been hyping up self-replicating mRNA as a solution, but that's still in its infancy, and has its own problems regarding the "compilers"/polymerases that need to be packaged with it.

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#6
post #3

> So if you’re going to give patients an mRNA injection and you don’t want to set off alarm bells in the innate immune system, you’re going to have to carefully engineer your sequences at the very least. Isn't that what substituting uracil by pseudouridine solves?

No, that substitution helps, but it doesn't solve the problem. You're still introducing foreign mRNA into the body, and the body still has millions of years of evolution telling it that foreign mRNA = invader .

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#7
I am worried about the low level of intact mRNA in those vaccines, esp. as an IT guy.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/early-concerns-rai...

25-45% randomly modified or defective mRNA doesn't sound safe. It's a bit like machine code with random errors, isn't it?

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#8

I am worried about the low level of intact mRNA in those vaccines, esp. as an IT guy. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/early-concerns-rai... 25-45% randomly modified or defective mRNA doesn't sound safe. It's a bit like machine code with random errors, isn't it?

What's the replication accuracy of SARS-CoV-2?

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#9

I am worried about the low level of intact mRNA in those vaccines, esp. as an IT guy. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/early-concerns-rai... 25-45% randomly modified or defective mRNA doesn't sound safe. It's a bit like machine code with random errors, isn't it?

That's why there are clinical trials. Humans testing to find out what happens.

All mRNA disappears from body in few days anyway.

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#10

I am worried about the low level of intact mRNA in those vaccines, esp. as an IT guy. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/early-concerns-rai... 25-45% randomly modified or defective mRNA doesn't sound safe. It's a bit like machine code with random errors, isn't it?

RNA uses an error-correcting code, and if that fails all that should happen is that some of the proteins your ribosomes create will be misshapen. Your body is good at dealing with foreign proteins.
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