What exactly goes into developing a vaccine for a new disease?
Subunit and similar types of vaccines introduce a fragment of the virus into the body, for example, the"spike" protein that sticks out on the shell of a coronavirus.
The idea behind a subunit vaccine is that when the body recognises the protein it creates specialised immune cells that block the receptors, effectively shutting down the door to the virus. But they carry the same downside of inactivated virus vaccines, in that the challenge is getting the body to recognise the virus fragment as enough of a threat to create an effective immune response.Unlike the other types, which include the actual virus or portions of it, genetic vaccines simply contain DNA or RNA — the code that tells cells what to produce.
The body then detects both the genetic material and new protein as foreign and mount an immune response against it.Dr Labzin said RNA vaccines were so new there aren't actually any existing vaccines of this type yet.These vaccines introduce a different type of virus that has been engineered to include proteins of the virus the vaccine is aiming to protect against.
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