This webinar, "New Technology, Old Fears: A Walk Through the Science and Myths of mRNA Vaccines," presented by Dr. Dan Wilson, aims to demystify mRNA vaccine technology by explaining its scientific principles, addressing common myths, and highlighting the rigorous manufacturing and testing processes involved.
thank you for watching the recording of
new technology old Fierce a walk through
the science and myths of mRNA vaccines
this session was presented by Dr Dan
Wilson on November 20th
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2025 all right well good afternoon
everyone my name is Dr Tracy Newman I am
a pediatrician associate professor of
practice in public health and the
medical director at North Dakota State
University Center for immunization
research and education also known as
Siri today I have the pleasure of
introducing Dr Dan Wilson who will be
presenting this webinar titled new
technology old fears a walk through the
science and myths of mRNA vaccines Dr
Dan Wilson is a molecular biologist who
earned his Doctorate in biological
sciences at Carnegie melon University he
currently works as a senior associate
scientist at a biotech company and
spends part of his free time exercising
his passion for for science
communication on his YouTube channel
debunk the funk with Dr Wilson his
channel focuses on debunking antivaccine
myths and disinformation using sources
from the primary scientific literature
this webinar is being recorded a
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NDSU doci
ndsu.edu Dr well Dr Wilson you can
begin thanks for that introduction Tracy
and thank you all for joining uh I'm
very thankful for the NDSU team for
inviting me to give this talk and I
think it's an important topic to discuss
in these times so uh hopefully you all
learn something and we can uh talk about
some cool science so with that said
okay just uh really quick uh I have
disclose and let's get started so
misinformation flourished during the
time of Co and it's important to
understand why that happened so uh Co
was a situation that was pretty
unprecedented we had times where we were
home for weeks if not months uh there
was there was a lot of upheaval in the
regular work space there was a lot of
there were a lot of changes to daily
norms and of course there was also a
virus that was spreading and killing uh
at most about 4,000 Americans a day at
one point and that was all very scary
and very uh very big in everyone's daily
life and so when there are these kinds
of unprecedented changes and big events
happening that creates a lot of genuine
fear and that genuine fear uh can turn
into sign kind of a desire to uh look
for easy answers or look for Easy Way
outs of complicated situations and so
during those times misinformation which
does often provide easy simple answers
as opposed to the more nuanced and
complex realities that we Face uh can be
a more approachable or more palatable
thing for people to accept uh during
those times and so during Co there were
a lot of organized antivaccine campaigns
that sprung up gained Steam and took up
a lot of a lot of space online and it
helped a lot of people feel better about
the events that were going
on and we see this in the data we see
that uh covid-19 and vaccine related
myths uh have kind of gained Steam and
gained in numbers uh even uh as the
years go on some of them have gotten
more and more popular or kind of
fluctuated in
popularity so idea is that uh covid
vaccines change people's DNA has uh has
gone up uh has gone up in uh since 2022
and a lot of these other myths have kind
of either stayed the same or uh not
changed very much so it's important to
address these myths and continue to
educate so that these myths don't
so that brings us to how do we address
this misinformation thankfully there is
research on how best to address uh these
kinds of myths how to have these
conversations with people and of course
you have to be willing to have
conversations of people who might be
misinformed or might disagree with you
uh but in order to have those
conversations effectively we have to do
things like familiarize yourself with
false claims if you're in a conversation
with somebody and they make a claim like
covid vaccines change your DNA I read
this paper and you've never read that
paper before you don't know about the
claim it's talking about it might be
harder to have that
conversation but uh you can if you have
the facts on hand you can quickly
address those topics and talk through
that claim with whoever you're having
the conversation with but either way uh
we see that research does show that
followup is really important so whether
you know what the person is talking
about in the conversation um right then
and there or or not it's important to
follow up and have other conversations
you know like at the end of a
conversation say I'll I'll look at this
paper if you uh read this article or
I'll watch this video if you listen to
the scientist and can we come back and
talk some other time so building
building trust and see these people for
these people to see that you know us
scientists and medical professionals are
real people and we do uh do our best to
put out good work and that these facts
aren't really nebulous that you can
really talk through them and teach them
uh that that matters and is important to
a lot of
people so uh objectives for this talk is
we're going to discuss the science of
how mRNA vaccines work and how they're
made so that we have this kind of Base
understanding of the basic science so
that we can go into conversations with a
good amount of knowledge and be able to
communicate that during these kinds of
conversations we'll also explore the
breakthroughs that made mRNA vaccines
possible there are there's at least one
breakthrough that was really really
important that often uh leads to some
misunderstanding in how they work so
we're going to discuss that and then
we're going to identify some specific
common myths and think through them
using the background that uh is
discussed in this
talk so
one thing that is really important and
what we'll start with is just explaining
how vaccines work this was a really big
uh I think sticking point for people
during the pandemic people had a kind of
an expectation on how vaccines are
supposed to work and in reality the
vaccine didn't meet that expectation but
vaccines uh Don't Really Work by
preventing infections and I think a lot
of people expected covid vaccine to
prevent infections prevent them from
getting a positive test prevent them
from getting uh symptoms but vaccines
prevent disease and this has been true
since vaccines have been have been
around uh they will uh they work to
prime your immune system to recognize a foreign
foreign
pathogen and when your immune system is
recognizing that foreign pathogen or
pieces of that pathogen in the in the
vaccine it builds an immune memory
and that immune memory is what really is
going to matter in preventing the
disease not the infection and this image
here just shows a schematic of what a
typical immune response might look like
where a naive uh B cell a B cell is a
cell that creates antibodies encounters
a pathogen or a foreign antigen and it
uh it divides it clonally expands it
produces a lot of antibodies and then
those uh levels of antibodies will will
go down and then in a secondary immune
response you get another Peak and then
another decrease in
Plateau so it's this it's this Plateau
period where uh you can still encounter
infections and even experience symptoms
but it's this uh this peak this memory
response that is going to clear the
pathogen before uh before symptoms or uh
the actual disease happens I should say
so you might get symptoms but it might
not be uh like severe
symptoms and a good example of this is
polio vaccines uh but we're going to
talk a little bit more about that in
this next slide where um we
explain why uh Co seem to be different
why is it that someone could get a polio
vaccine and not get polio their whole
life but they get covid vaccines and
then they test positive for Co is it the
vaccine is it something else what's
going on it turns out it's really it
really comes down to the pathogen's
incubation period so this in this table
here for example we look at polio polio
myelitis from the time the virus infects
yourselves to the time you get paralysis
or other severe symptoms is 5 to 20
days and during that time your body has
enough time to uh have an immune memory
response for those B cells that
initially encountered the vaccine to
clonally expand to build antibodies and
for tea cells also to get mobilized
around your body to address the virus
and clear it before it causes something
like paralysis so you could get infected
with polio and never know it because you
don't get paralyzed and you don't get
those severe symptoms however if we look
further up in the chart with diseases or
viruses like influenza or the common
cold and Corona virus would be
um in the same family of the viruses
that cause common cold those incubation
periods are on the order of 1 to a few
days that's not fast that's not long
enough for your immune memory response
to kick in and clear the virus before
you get any symptoms so that is why we
see a lot of people still testing
positive for SARS CO2 uh even after
they've been vaccinated for covid but
the vaccine is also why we are no longer
in lockdowns why we are no longer seeing
thousands of Americans dying every
single day from covid the vaccines give
us an immune memory response so that we
can address the virus and clear it
before it gets to your lower lungs and
causes severe respiratory
distress so that's how vaccines are
supposed to work they're supposed to
prevent disease not infection this was
not communicated super well during the
pandemic and I think it's an important
point to go in to to know going into
these conversations because a lot of
people still might think that the
vaccines didn't work because they tested
vaccinated another thing to important to
remember about how vaccines work is just
to explain the components of a vaccine
um vaccines always will contain either a
weakened uh form of the pathogen it is
vaccinating against a killed pathogen or
just pieces of the pathogen
immune cells are going to see these
foreign proteins these foreign parts or
pieces of a pathogen and build their
immune memory response against those foreign
foreign
pathogens and this immune memory
response is going to be composed of B
cells which again produce antibodies but
also te- cells which function
differently and the te- cells are also
really important to remember but uh
we'll tuck that away for a few slides
later so um antibodies bed
epitopes uh which are PE parts of a of a
pathogen essentially so pathogen has
foreign proteins and an epitope is a
part of that foreign
protein whereas te- cells will bind
peptides or short sequences of proteins
on their MHC molecules both memory types
uh of these cells will persist after a
vaccination and be ready to engage a
foreign pathogen when those form
themselves so all vaccines accomplish
essentially this goal show borign
proteins to your immune system have your
immune system respond and build an
immune memory response this has always
been how vaccines have worked and now we
have uh lots of different kinds of
vaccines today from the oldest vaccine
around like alive or inactive or
weakened vaccine to all the way to to um
nucleic acid vaccines like mRNA and DNA
vaccines they all work on these same
principles and so when someone is
talking about fears they have about mRNA
vaccines you can explain these kinds of
uh basic principles to get the point
across that mRNA vaccines really do
function uh at the base level exactly
like every other vaccine that we've had
for decades or
centuries and the these are the details
of how mRNA vaccines work um you have an
mRNA vaccine with a piece of genetic
material and that genetic material is of
course the MRNA and that mRNA is
encapsulated with lipid nanop particles
which is essentially just fat so you can
just tell people it's just nucle nucleic
acids which we all have and fats which
we all have and the MRNA in the nucle in
the lipid nanop particle is going to
encode for a piece of the pathogen in
this case it's coding for a piece of
SARS K2 the spike protein uh it codes
for the spike protein because a spike
protein is on the outside of the of the
virus it's the easy it's the first
protein that your immune system is going
to see and neutralizing it with
antibodies is going to help prevent the
virus from spreading from cell to
cell so once the MRNA um vaccine is
injected into someone's shoulder then
the the lip and nanop particle is going
to essentially fuse with a cell so the
fats of the lip and nanop particle are
going to fuse with the fats of the cell
membrane and deliver the payload which
is the MRNA into the inside of the cell
and once the MRNA is inside the cell
ribosomes which are the machines in your
cells that um read mRNA and produce
protein are going to do their job
they're going to make protein and that
protein is going to be of course a spike
protein which your immune system will
towards so let's pause and recap if a
common concern is that covid vaccines
don't work because you still get covid
you can easily address this with facts
by explaining that SARS K2 is a short
incubation period virus it's not going
to be quickly neutralized by your uh
immune memory response if your vaccine
or if your last vaccine or last exposure
to a virus was a few months
ago so you might still get those
symptoms as the virus is replicating in
your upper respiratory tract but your
immune memory response is going to kick
in and clear the virus or stop it from
reaching your lower respiratory tract
where you would typically get those
severe severe symptoms like being
hypoxic or having respiratory distress
which would be normally what what would
land you in the
hospital another question that uh or a
common concern that people might have is
why should they get vaccinated if they
can still spread the virus and the
answer to this is that vaccination
actually does reduce the risk of your
transmission because you are you you
might be infectious for SARS K2 for uh
several days after you first get
infected but if an immune memory
response kicks in and starts clearing
the virus during that time you can
reduce that window of infectious
infectious shedding thus reducing your
chances of spreading it to someone else
however it doesn't eliminate it that's
why SARS KOB 2 is still around we're not
going to get rid of it it's here to stay
so that's a big reason to still get
vaccinated if the concern is what good
is it doing anybody else um but you
should also just say that you know I
want you to be healthy I want you person
who is concerned about mRNA vaccines to
be healthy I don't want you to get
infected and end up with respiratory
distress and end up in the hospital I
don't want you to suffer uh and that's
really important we we shouldn't want
this for each other and explaining the
science of how these mRNA vaccines are
going to do that for that person and
also potentially help the people around
them is import are important points to
make so um with mRNA vaccines being a
new technology uh there are a lot of
concerns about whether or not it is uh
safe or exactly even understanding
exactly what it is so let's go through a
little refresher of what exactly is mRNA
that we can use to explain in these
kinds of
conversations messenger Mr messenger RNA
or mRNA is just a form of it's It's a
step in gene expression so it's
transcribed from DNA so uh we all have
DNA in all of our cells and the MRNA is
transcribed by enzymes um from DNA
and DNA is kept in the nucleus RNA is
kept in the cytoplasm outside the
nucleus so once the MRNA is transported
outside of the nucleus after being read
from DNA the ribosome as I said earlier
is going to translate it into protein
mRNA uh because of how this process
works is much less stable than DNA so
DNA is kind of like the repository in
the library where um all the information
is kept and then mRNA is like a
transcript of of notes that someone
writes down from reading that reading
that repository and then taking it
outside the
library so uh the point here is that
mRNA is not going to be very stable and
is going to degrade over time which
impermanent and uh I think explaining to
people that mRNA is something that is
very uh essential to life and uh very
common in in all of our cells is also
important so these points of Mr this
point the point that mRNA is constantly
being produced in all of your cells and
that a single cell is going to have
about 360,000 M molecules at any given
time uh is important to important to
express uh the point being is nothing
should be scary about mRNA mRNA is a
very common molecule in life and we need
it to survive and our cells are always
making it so our cells are not seeing
anything new or unusual when we get an
mRNA vaccine it's just another piece of
code that our ribosomes are going to
read to create whatever protein is being coded
for um along these lines of kind of
demystifying or making mRNA vaccines
less scary it's I like to compare them
to uh live attenuated vaccines because
live attenuated vaccines is something
that has been around for a very very
long time and has a very very long
safety record and live attenuated
vaccines are essentially just a wild
virus that has been grown or modified in
a way that weakens it so that it becomes
incapable of causing uh severe disease
in humans because it just isn't good at
replicating in humans or there's some
other change made to
it and how these vaccines work is it
introduces the whole live weakened virus
into your into your body and this virus
is going to have u a genome it's going
to have DNA or might have RNA and it's
going to enter cells and create what we
call a limited infection so it's going
to infect some cells it might reproduce
a little bit but it's not going to
create a full-blown infection and
capable causing
disease um and so it's going to function
kind of similarly to RNA vaccines where
during replication your cells and your
ribosomes are going to read the genetic
material in the virus and produce
proteins that your immune system is
going to recognize and build an immune response
response
towards if anything uh mRNA vaccines are
arguably much safer because instead of
having an entire wild weaken virus
introduced it's just a piece of a virus
it's just in the case of covid mRNA
vaccines one mRNA in one protein as
opposed to a whole genome with lots of
proteins so I like this comparison to
kind of demystify Mr vaccines as
unknown so why mRNA vaccines why did we
have mRNA vaccines in response to the co
pandemic and not a live attenuated
vaccine or protein based vaccine um in
the first in the first year after the
pandemic well uh I already kind of went
over one point which is safety it's like
an mRNA it's it's like an attenuated
vaccine but it's there's no pathogen
it's not infectious it's
nonintegrating and it's going to be a
much simpler uh blueprint essentially
for a vaccine and the other big
Advantage uh that mRNA vaccines bring and
and
probably the most important reason that
we had M vaccines over another vaccine
first is the manufacturing capabilities
it which offer Speed and flexibility to
M vaccines that isn't offered to others
so we see in this timeline here just how
quickly Mr vaccines uh went to Market uh
with the first covid case uh in America
being identified in uh First Co cases is
being identified in uh January of 2020
and then uh we had the
Genome of the virus not long after and
once we had the genome those sequences
could be used to generate Mr or um
generate Mna vaccines by companies like
fizer or Mna and once you have the
sequence and you just produce the m and
package it in a lipid nanop particle
with the technology for which had
already been established it was easy for
these companies to hit the ground
running and just uh put these products
straight into pre-clinical trials or
phase one trials and get the get the process
rolling so again let's pause and recap
if the concern is that Mr vaccine
technology is too new and they don't
think it's safe we can explain that mRNA
vaccines function really similar
similarly to vaccines that have been
around for decades but function
differently in ways that make them even
safer we can also explain that Mr is not
natural your cells constantly make it
and there's nothing really different
about Mr vaccines that would make it uh
function any differently than your
mrnas so now we're going to move into
how mRNA vaccines are actually made
which is an important point to again
demystify mRNA
vaccines so uh plasmids are are pieces
of circular DNA that are used in the
manufacturing process of mRNA vaccines I
I explained earlier that mRNA comes from
DNA it gets transcribed from DNA so you
have to have DNA in order to make mRNA
and this schematic here is just showing
uh these circular pieces of DNA plasmids
which are separate from bacterial DNA in
in their normal setting and biotech and
biologists can use these plasmids that
are usually found in bacteria to do a
whole bunch of cool
things one of them of course is to take
these plasms for our own and um modify
their code so that they code for things
like Spike protein or other antigens we
might want to code for so this is just a
basic schematic of how mRNA vaccines are
made you start with plasma DNA and then
uh these plasma dnas are produced in U
specific settings which are very highly
regulated and from uh once you have a a
lot of these plasmids you can linearize
them which means you just introduce a
single cut into the plasmid which turns
it from a circle to a long straight
piece of DNA that long straight piece of
DNA gets moved into a what we call an
invitro react in invitro transcription
reaction which just means that um this
DNA is getting read by an enzyme to
produce mRNA in a system that is free of
any cells and once we have the MRNA we
can separate it from all the other junk
and package it into the lipid nanop
particle VI it uh in it's in a sterile
container finish it and uh do all the
other steps and then you have your
vaccine um so this is a little bit more
complicated schematic of uh the how an
Mna vaccine is made just to kind of
Drive the point home of how how much uh
regulation I mentioned earlier goes into
making these products
so every uh every biologic is going to
go through a a process like this where
uh once you have your plasma DNA for
example um the DNA is linearized in one
step and then uh purified from a lot of
the enzymes that were used in
linearizing the DNA and then going and
then it goes into the enro transcription
reaction and then there's another
purification step and then there's
another manufacturing step and another
purification step and this goes on and
on until you get your final product
there there are a lot of lot of steps
and each step uh has its own uh sets of
testing uh and um Quality Control
components that eventually go into uh
submission to the FDA before it gets
approved and all of these steps have to
be demonstrated and uh past uh C very
um and this is just a this is just a
slight explaining the kinds of
purification steps that might be used in
a manufacturing process uh a lot of
these manufacturing processes involve
steps that remove um uh nucleic nucleic
acids that are not RNA so you can
separate DNA out from RNA you can
separate out solvents or different ions
uh you can separate out the enzymes that
are used and all of it is is just to
introduce a pure and safe product at the
end and like I said earlier each of
these steps have very specific uh
testing requirements so uh at the end of
the process when you have your full drug
product there are going to be a lot of
uh Purity assays or tests that are
required by the FDA for each batch in
order for that batch to be released to
the public so any batch you have to do
things like confirm the sequence is the
MRNA sequence correct is it actually
coding for Spike protein was there some
mistake somewhere that changed the
sequence that has to be confirmed uh is
the RNA content making sense with the
dose um is the Mr V is the MRNA molecule
made properly did the Mna molecules get
their uh required uh molecular
components is it pure is there are there
any uh residual dnas which is G which is
a big uh concern with uh some people uh
today uh is there any is there any
endotoxin or components left over from
the bacteria that the plasmids were
harvested from all of these things and
more are very strictly tested for and
it's important to make this clear to
people who might be concerned about manufacturing
manufacturing processes
processes
so again let's pause and recap mRNA
vaccines uh being contaminated with DNA
is a common concern that I have seen uh
and I have made videos about on my
YouTube channel uh addressing in depth
uh that is out there and uh this is very
easily addressed just because of the
fact that all batches of mRNA vaccines
are very highly uh and strictly tested
at multiple steps of manufacturing to
ensure that residual contaminants like
the DNA are being removed at each step
and uh attempts to show that
contamination has been found uh have not
really panned out uh I've addressed
these specific claims more in depth on
my YouTube channel but it's suffice to
say here that uh these methods that
people use to claim High
contamination uh have not really been uh
validated or uh qualified to show that
these tests are measuring what they say
they measure uh
uh
furthermore which by the way is the
standard that um these manufacturers
have to meet and furthermore a i sh in
my videos on my channel that a lot of
the math and methods they use are not
appropriate for um the claims that that
are being made uh essentially what
they're doing is O way overestimating uh
the amount of DNA they're detecting and
claiming contamination but uh that has
not been the case um in actual uh batch
release data that has been reviewed by the
the
FDA so um these claims are very easily
addressed but they can get quite
complicated and nuanced so uh this is
just the base information that is needed
to to address
them so uh moving on to uh breakthroughs
in mRNA vaccine technology uh in 2023
the Nobel Prize in physiology or
medicine was given to these two
individuals Dr Drew Weissman on the left
and Dr Catlin Caro on the right uh two
awesome scientists who spent many years
developing technology necessary to make
mRNA vaccines possible and so let's go
over just one of those breakthroughs
here um here's just a little timeline uh
showing the amount of work and the
amount of discoveries that were
necessary to make mRNA vaccines uh a
viable technology
um and this I think I think this is also
important to explain when people think
that mRNA vaccines are new and might be
afraid of them because they think
they're too new uh the fact that they've
been being developed for decades uh is
an important point to bring up this
isn't just a technology that somehow got
uh pushed through um within a couple
years it took decades and a lot of hard
work by a lot of brilliant scientists
to make these basic science discoveries
and the one that we're going to focus in
on here is this in 2005 which is the
paper that um was credited with winning
Kiko and Weissman the Nobel
Prize so uh that's this paper here
suppression of RNA recognition by
tolllike receptors the impact of
nucleoside modification and The
evolutionary origin of
RNA um essentially what this paper is
doing is it is explaining
how our innate immune system which
includes things like toll like receptors
which are these molecules here um the
molecule is shown in uh this green and
blue and what it's doing is it's
grabbing a piece of DNA it's grabbing a
nucleic acid so these components of
theate immune system these toll like
receptors are trained to bind to um
foreign nucleic acids foreign DNA and
foreign RNA because you don't your your
immune system does not want foreign DNA
or mRNA that is a sign of a pathogen so
it's trained to recognize them and so
these tolik receptors will grab
onto uh this RNA and Trigger Downstream immune
immune
responses which could be a problem if
you're trying to use a nucleic acid like
mRNA as a therapy or or a vaccine you
want it to actually do a job you want it
to do something you don't want it to
just get recognized by to like receptors
and essentially destroyed before it can
do anything so the introduction to this
paper explains this
background and asks essentially why is
it that the toac receptors are able to
identify this these four nucleic acids
so easily but it's able to differentiate
them away from uh our own mrnas and our own
own
dnas and the answer uh came in the form
of small modifications made to the
nucleotide bases so uh if you remember
um nucleic acids like DNA and mRNA are
composed of bases which we often call
letters uh for DNA it's a T C and G for
um for RNA the t is substituted with a u
um and that's uh your
this molecule here and this whole paper
is essentially exploring uh this
modification to urine in mRNA molecules
uh which is called pseudo urine which is
just a change of this carbon here
changing from a carbon to a
nitrogen and so what Kiko and others
noticed uh noticed was um that human
mrnas and human rnas in general are much
more modified with things like pseudo
urine than their bacterial counterparts
so bacteria have uh far fewer
modifications throughout their rnas than
humans do and they have they also
noticed that some RNA viruses have a lot
of modifications way more than humans
maybe that's helping them go unnoticed
by the inate immune
system so uh Kiko
investigated uh what these
modifications due to an innate immune
response and essentially what she did
was she took mRNA molecules that have
modifications and and M molecules that
don't have modifications and she used uh
experiments to measure how much immune
cells were responding to these different mRNA
mRNA
molecules and uh I'll just draw your
attention to to this uh lower to this uh
portion of this figure here showing that
modified or unmodified mrnas produced a
lot of this molecule here which is a an
immune molecule and modified mrnas which
are pseudo urine is denoted by this
trident looking symbol uh didn't produce
as much uh of the immune molecule and
almost some some modifications produce
none so this was a really important find
uh this modifications to mRNA
could uh help the mRNA molecules not
trigger this innate immune
response so essentially what we ended up
with was something like this where um
unmodified mRNA is triggering an innate
immune response and uh a subsequent
inflammatory response and thus
destroying the MRNA too quickly before
it can actually do
anything base modified mRNA is is not
triggering as much of an immune response
there's not as much inflammation and the
MRNA can actually stick around long
enough for the ribosome to read it and
produce a protein
protein
so uh you can easily see that in an
unmodified uh scenario you don't get
your protein you don't get your foreign
antigen you don't get your immune memory
response whereas in the modified
scenario you get your foreign protein
you get the immune response and you get
so um this is just uh another paper
showing that inate immune responses of
um uh with modified mRNA still do
produce an innate immune response uh
it's not like it's not like the
modifications to the MRNA are completely
a blading or completely avoiding an
innate immune response they are still
producing an innate immune response
and that's uh just what this figure is
showing here uh that immune uh uh immune
simulated genes essentially are be are
still being triggered when you have um
this modified
mRNA and this is all just to make the
point that what you're essentially doing
is you're tuning the innate immune
response uh not directly but
you're but indirectly by avoiding it so
again the concept is if you have too
much of an immune response with
unmodified mRNA you get no protein and
no immune response if you get too uh too
little inate immune response then you
don't get much inflammation at the site
and you might not get as much immune
cell recruitment so Amna vaccines have
been developed over decades uh not just
with Kiko's finding but with several
other scientists findings to tune the
immune response so that uh you still can
get uh expression of the MRNA you still
get a protein but you don't get too much
of an immune response to not get that immune
immune
memory um and it's also tuned in a way
that um you get effective immune cell
recruitment to the site of injection so
that you get an even better immune uh memory
memory
response but uh this has led to some
confusion um in uh the public space uh
some people have heard about this uh
Nobel Prize and thought that uh mRNA
vaccines are actually directly affecting
the immune response or dampening the
innate immune system and that's not
really what's happening it's just not
triggering it it's not affecting the IM
inate immune system's ability to
function it's just not triggering it
itself so uh they don't suppress the
immune system they just avoid it in ways
that allow for an effective immune memory
memory
response and another claim or just
concern about um modified mrnas in
general is that the modifications made
to the MRNA are uh dangerous or the
dangers aren't known uh again that goes
into kind of this fear of new
technologies but the truth is that the
modifications to Mna are natural they
are found in nature and there're also
modifications are also found in our own
cells and in lots of other organisms so
there's nothing really unnatural about
them so there's no reason to think that
the MRNA is going to function
differently in our cells um any
differently than uh the normal
endogenous mRNA in our
cells so uh but this uh goes into kind
of uh a next big concern that I see just
in general uh in the public and it's
this concern that Mr vaccines are
somehow causing cancer and the truth is
that M vaccines don't cause cancer but
why is that why do we know that to be
the case uh it's important to understand
uh a few Basics about cancer before uh
being able to talk about this um cancer
is really a disease of the genes it's a
disease of uh cells DNA getting damaged
enough so that the mechanisms that your
cells have that allow them to work
together break down and Rogue cells
essentially just start uh expanding and
uh multiplying UNC in an uncontrolled
way and this DNA damage uh can be caused
by things like carcinogens or mutagens
and typically for these things to cause
cancer you have to have multiple
exposures over long periods of time or
you have to have a persistent
Persistence of the carcinogen um I
mentioned earlier that the components of
the MRNA vaccine are impermanent the
MRNA is going to go away the protein
going to go away and uh that is now
shown here in in this slide where um
researchers looked at the protein that
nucleoid modified mRNA can
produce and in this case it's a protein
that fluoresces so they can measure it
and they injected an animal with the
with this mRNA in multiple different
ways so that's what these abbreviations
and different colored lines on the side
mean um it's just intravenous or int
intrarenal or intramuscular and
intramuscular is the one that is
relevant to
vaccines and we see that um when it when
an intram intramuscular injection is
given the protein produced by the uh
nucleoside modified
mRNA uh it Peaks at about uh days day um
just before day one
and then it gradually declines over time
to a point where it's undetectable so
this is just to show that these uh
pharmacokinetic experiments have been
done we know that Mr vaccines aren't
going to stick around and continue to
cause uh whatever issue might
theoretically be responsible for any uh supposed
supposed
cancers uh it just can't it can't do
that it's not going to stick around and
cause these things uh
but uh a big concern that a lot of
people will pivot to is it's not the
MRNA it's the DNA it's the residual DNA
from left over from the plasmid in the
manufacturing process that uh might be
causing Cancers and we know that that's
not possible either so why do we know
that that's not possible um the reason
is that uh like I explained earlier all
biologics are made with um are going
through these same kind of manufactur
facturing quality control steps and it's
because all biologics are going to have
DNA in the process at some point um a a
vaccine might need cells to grow a virus
at some point and those cells have DNA
um insulin uh needs to be produced by
cells and those cells have DNA so all
all pharmacological biologics are going
to have DNA so manufacturers know how to
test for it manufacturers know how to
remove it and manufacturers or scienti
have studied uh the potential harms of
these residual dnas in these products so
this paper here uh is doing just that
it's looking at um the potential for DNA
on its own to cause Cancers and what
they essentially found is that DNA on
its own cannot cause cancer unless it
encodes enogen or genes that code for
proteins that can cause cancer so what
they did was they um they had they
introduced DNA into cells and culture
and they also did this experiment with
with mice but uh you see at this top row
here this DNA is just plain old DNA it's
got no no special genes added um
conveniently this particular piece of
DNA is a plasmid and it has a lot of the
same components that people might be
concerned about in the sequence of the
plasmid used to manufacture mRNA
vaccines and when they introduce this
DNA to the cells there's no uh there's
no uh FY or uh bundles of cancer cells
that they see and uh an important Point
that's not shown in this image is that
this the amount of DNA being added in
each case is U about a
thousandfold uh the up it's a
thousandfold more than the upper limit
of DNA that is allowed in uh each batch
of biologic
so again no no cancer with um with just
plain old DNA but when they add enogen
to the DNA you start to see uh cancer
cells forming and when they combine two
enogen onto the same piece of DNA you
get uh a lot of cancerous cells so it's
these enogen that are exerting a
cancerous effect in this residual DNA
scenario but uh the good thing about
mRNA vaccines is that there are no monco
genes in the plasmid there are no genes
that code for proteins that can exert a cancerous
cancerous effect
effect
um so
uh this is just a a passage from this
paper explaining explaining just that
and driving home the point that uh DNA
on its own if without enco is going to
have a potential of causing uh mutations
or cancer causing mutations at a rate
that is less than the passage of time
essentially so the point is this topic
has been studied residual DNA has a very
very low to non-existent risk when it
cancer so uh the misconception that Mna
vaccines cause cancer is widespread
online we just went through a lot of the
reasons why MRA vaccines cannot cause
cancer why residual DNA cannot cause
cancer when it does not contain enogen
or is present in really Trace Amounts
but there's also the fact that uh cancer
has not increased cancer rates have not
increased in a way that would be
attributable to
mRNA uh for this you can go to just
regular uh cancer reporting statistics
uh websites like Seer
Seer um to see that the rates of cancers
have not exploded uh after billions of
doses of Mna vaccines have gone out to
the public which you would expect if
these Mna vaccines had any potential to cause
cause
cancer so uh that is just um that's just
how I would address that big concern
that is unfortunately uh pretty common
in certain online circles and public
spaces so um to get to the end of this
talk um we have to keep addressing myths
uh with facts uh misinformation is going
to keep coming um it's going to it's
been around for a very very long time
fear about these kinds of fears about
miss about vaccines have been around for
a very very long time uh a lot of them
are not really new they're just kind of
repackaged in different ways to fit into
the MRNA vaccine box uh so it's going to
keep coming and we have to keep uh
educating and addressing it so that
people can continue to make informed
choices and they're going to be lots of
specific claims uh that I can't address
all in one talk um but in any case I
encourage you to just start with Basics
uh go to the data that you do know and
follow up uh if you're having these
conversations with people and uh for
specific claims that uh you might want
to investigate between conversations I
recommend a source like vaxopedia Doom
or.org sorry um it's created by an MD
and has it's been around for um many
years and has lots of articles on lots
of specific
claims um and just uh finally uh this is
this is an image of uh cartoon from uh
over a century ago about uh small poox
vaccines and the cartoon is basically
showing that people are getting
vaccinated with small poox uh vaccine
and growing little cows uh and I include
this just to show the fact that these
kinds of concerns are not new uh people
even before they knew what DNA was had
some concern that vaccines are going to
affect um some essence or some some core
part of their being in a way that is
unnatural or scary um and we know that
small pox vaccines helped eradicate one
of the worst and deadliest viruses that
we have we have dealt with as a human
uh so despite these despite these fears
and uh misinformation we did uh we did
do that so for those who might be
feeling discouraged or
um little hopeless in uh their efforts
against misinformation we have done
these things despite misinformation in
the past and so we have to just keep
continuing to do it um in a new
information landscape so these fears are
old but but they're they're still easily
addressed with with science and facts uh
and with that I'm going to uh end the
talk thank you Dr Wilson that was
excellent so with that I do believe
we've had a few questions come in um I'm
going to just summarize here if that's
okay Dr Wilson one is essentially just
asking um how long is the normal vaccine
approval process versus the emergency
use authorization
and sort of as a followup um how can we
ensure that there were checks and
balances like were assured in doing such
an expedited process yeah that's another
really common one that I didn't get to
but um so normally what happens in a
vaccine approval process you hear that
it takes 10 years or 20 years to approve
a vaccine uh and whereas Mr vaccines
were obviously uh put through clinical
trials and approved in about a year so
why the discrepancy and the answer is
really just comes down to um money and
FDA weight Q times so what happens
normally is uh if there's a molecule
that or or vaccine that a company wants
to develop they uh will first have to
allocate the funds or fund raise for it
and then put it through prclinical
trials where they test it on animals um
and that is after developing and having
a a final product um they put it through
animal testing and then they collect
those animal testing data and submit it
to the FDA and then they wait uh they
wait for the FDA to review it and
approve it as um a new molecular entity
or um whatever step comes next and then
they say okay you can move on to phase
one and then the company decid do we
want to move on to phase one okay let's
move on to phase one let's phase one
trials with humans same thing collect
the data submit to the FDA wait get an
answer do we want to move on to phase
two if the answer is yes go to phase two
and again for phase three and that takes
a long time it just takes it it takes
many years for that process to uh go
through and there's a lot of uncertainty
in the terms of money so a company is
taking risk on a product um they might
not want to uh move forward very quickly with
with
it uh so with M vaccines money was uh
taken care of uh there was money um
risk-free money provided by the
government uh the US government to get
these companies to try to produce a
vaccine we didn't know if a vaccine
would be successful but the government
said here's a bunch of money try to
produce a
vaccine um and with FDA weit Q times uh
the companies didn't have to wait wa in
line right they because normally when
you submit for U an FDA approval process
you have to you get put behind everybody
else who submitted before you but in
this case it was emergency so the FDA
had priority in reviewing covid related
things especially vaccines so uh it
doesn't actually take super long to do
pre-clinical testing to do a phase one
trial to do a phase three trial it
doesn't take very long to actually do
those things in collect the data a lot
of the time that you hear about a lot of
the time involved in that 10-year
timeline that you hear about is inv is
wrapped up in weight times and money
issues so those two things were not uh a
factor in covid vaccines and um the eua
process still included all of the steps
it still included pre-clinical steps it
still included a phase one trial it
still included a phase three trial uh it
still included all all of those regular
steps that would be involved in a
regular approval process it was just
expedited and I I like to describe it as
you know you order a package on Amazon
and you choose um expedited Prime
shipping you expect the product to get
to you intact and uh you know the
correct product to get to you intact and
not broken uh you you don't expect a
faulty product in the in an expedited
process it's just prioritized and
expedited so hopefully that helps yeah
great analogy thank you for that um I
think this is a great question to end on
it'll be a quick one uh there's a
comment it says this presentation is
fantastic I'm learning so much in our
busy Community vaccine clinic we
typically have just a couple of minutes
to give a response about why M mRNA
vaccines are safe in just a couple of
sentences without the benefit of graphs
or table or data tables how would you
best respond to someone who's worried
about the overall safety uh of an mRNA vaccine
that is that is a good one um yeah sorry
to put you on the spot I'll do I'll do
my best but I think if I just had a few
minutes or a few sentences to explain to
someone who doesn't know anything about
M vaccines uh why they're
safe I would say that
um I would say that MRA vaccines work
very similarly to vaccines that we have
studied for
decades um and we know are safe and in
addition we have had um billions of
doses go out all over the world we've
had we've had uh thousands of scientists
from multiple different Labs multiple
different institutions multiple
different countries all with different
interests and backgrounds all studying
this uh Mr vaccine and they all agree
that it's very safe and if you think
that a bunch of really competitive nerdy scientist
scientist
would all agree on something if it
weren't if it weren't true then um you
haven't been to a Star Trek conference
or convention uh but something like that
I think I would emphasize that you know
we we have a lot of knowledge about how
these vaccines work we have a lot of
pre-existing research and we also have a
very lobal scientific community that has
looked into this studied it
and have not found um anything to suggest that it is um that any there are
suggest that it is um that any there are any risks that are outweighing the
any risks that are outweighing the benefits excellent well thank you so
benefits excellent well thank you so much and thank you again to everyone for
much and thank you again to everyone for joining us today we look forward to
joining us today we look forward to seeing you again at our next
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