Moderna has announced that it is developing a single-dose vaccine that will combine a two-in-one booster shot that protects against both COVID and flu.
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said, “Our number one priority as a company right now is to bring to market a pan-respiratory annual booster vaccine, which we plan to always customize and upgrade.” Bancel added, “We believe this is just the beginning of a new age of information-based medicines.”
While the company didn’t say when trials for its new hybrid vaccine would start, following the announcement, Moderna’s stock price rose by 7.81%.
According to the reports, some medical professionals fear the flu season could begin earlier this year and cause more severe illness because people haven’t “been able to build up their natural immune defenses,” presumably because of the lockdowns that took a toll on people’s health. Since COVID is likely to develop into an endemic disease, meaning it will keep spreading throughout communities without major outbreaks, but with annual wintertime peaks, like the flu and common cold, COVID vaccination will likely become a yearly routine, per the vaccine manufacturers.
How does the Moderna vaccine operate, precisely? The company believes the messenger RNA technology that is used in the vaccine and which Moderna calls “software of life” is the ultimate mechanism to addressing all future disease challenges.
Dr. Tal Zaks, Moderna’s chief medical officer, explained in 2017 that mRNA vaccines, inspired by the advancements of what he called a “digital scientific revolution,” basically “hack the software of life”:
In every cell there’s this thing called messenger RNA […] that transmits the critical information from the DNA in our genes to the protein, which is really the stuff we’re all made out of. This is the critical information that determines what the cell will do. So we think about it as an operating system.
So if you could change that, if you could introduce a line of code, or change a line of code, it turns out, that has profound implications for everything, from the flu to cancer.
Dr. Zaks went on to say that instead of giving the patient the protein of a virus, mRNA vaccines give the body instructions on how to make the protein, or “make its own vaccine.”
Notably, Moderna, a 10-year-old biotech company, has been developing its mRNA-based vaccines for years, but it only began administering them to humans for the first time with the COVID pandemic.
The Moderna vaccine is currently administered in the U.S. under the Emergency Use Authorization(EUA) received from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to Moderna’s fact sheet for recipients and caregivers, it is intended for use in individuals 18 years of age and older and is given as a two-dose series, one month apart. Also, it is noted that it “may prevent you from getting COVID-19” and “may not protect everyone.” It is unclear why it can’t, given the company’s advertisement of the mRNA technology that is presumably so advanced and effective.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently started recommending that people with moderately to severely compromised immune systems receive an additional dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine at least 28 days after a second dose of their Pfizer or Moderna jabs.
Last month, the White House announced a plan to begin offering the third doses of Moderna and Pfizer to the general population the week of September 20, and eight months after an individual’s second dose. However, the FDA, which is supposed to green-light the rollout, said Moderna’s boosters likely won’t meet the September 20 deadline.
While the CDC only lists a handful of side effects associated with Moderna shot, such as local reactions in the injection site — including pain, redness, and swelling — and chills, fever, nausea, and tiredness though the rest of the body, it reassures the recipients that those symptoms will only last for a day or two and are “normal.”
In reality, though, Moderna has come under scrutiny in Japan, which suspended 1.6 million doses of the shot following reports of contaminated vials at the end of August. Moderna confirmed that the vials contained stainless steel, which, the company said jointly with the local vaccine provider, did not pose any health risks. Still, this week, Japan has launched investigation into the deaths of three persons who died after receiving vaccines from a batch that was later recalled.
In addition to that, Moderna shots are being investigated by the European Union’s top medicine watchdog, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), for allegedly causing such side effects as dermatologic, urinary, and menstrual disorders.
It was previously reported that one of the most potentially tragic side effects of the mRNA vaccines is their interaction with cancer cells. According to a study at New York City-based Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the mRNA tends to deactivate tumor-suppressing proteins, suggesting it can promote the growth of already-existing cancer cells.
Dr. Robert Malone, an inventor of mRNA technology used by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, has warned that mRNA vaccines remain “biologically active,” i.e., get bio-distributed throughout the body, and the spike protein that they cause the body to produce is not “harmless,” as the CDC claims, but “cytotoxic,” i.e., it can damage cells.
