The Nobel Prize in Medicine for the Katalin Kariko-Drew Weissman duo for their advances in messenger RNA vaccines, decisive in the fight against Covid, comes “at the right time”, “very quickly after the demonstration of their effectiveness” , celebrated on Monday the president of the committee for surveillance and anticipation of health risks (Covars), Brigitte Autran.
This award is “a particularly well-deserved” and “timely” reward, “very soon after the demonstration of the effectiveness” of this innovative methodology, he declared during a press conference on Covid.
The two Nobel Prize winners “have found a chemical way to modify RNA to make them usable as vaccines” and, with “the Covid pandemic, the effectiveness of these vaccines has been demonstrated in several billion people,” this immunologist stressed.
mRNA vaccines have also demonstrated their ability to quickly adapt to the evolution of SARS-CoV-2, highlighted the president of Covars, on the day of the start of a new vaccination campaign aimed at French people at greatest risk of suffering from severe forms.
Preferred weapon against variants.
“Thanks to messenger RNA technology”, it was possible to obtain several vaccines “completely adapted” to the family of variants of the Covid-19 virus “that are circulating today and that were already circulating in spring,” said Brigitte Autran.
For this new campaign, vaccines adapted to the very widespread XXB.1.5 variant (Omicron subvariant) are recommended as the first line, regardless of the vaccine previously administered. They should be more effective against the different variants that are currently circulating the most, in particular EG.5.1.
The pandemic marked a before and after for messenger RNA vaccines, the president of Covars also highlighted.
“Before the Covid pandemic, there were a dozen vaccine projects against infectious diseases, today, more than sixty,” according to her.
Source: BFM TV
