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How the Various COVID Vaccines Work

COVID vaccine hesitancy is on the rise, perhaps in the wake of pressure to speed approval beyond scientific reason. But I think some of the hesitancy might be due to confusion over how so many different vaccines can target the same pathogen – and why this is a good idea.

The ultimate voice of scientific reason, Anthony Fauci said in a media webinar:

“I’m cautiously optimistic that with the multiple candidates with different platforms that we’re going to have a vaccine with a degree of efficacy that would make it deployable. The overwhelming majority of people make an immune response that clears the virus and recover. If the body can mount an immune response and clear the virus in natural infection, that’s a pretty good proof-of-concept that you’ll have an immune response against a vaccine.”

Having choices would provide options for people not covered by some of the vaccines, like those over age 65 and people with certain medical conditions. “It’s a misperception that vaccine development is a race to be a winner. I hope more than one is successful, with equitable distribution,” Fauci said.

The vaccines work in what can seem to be mysterious ways, but all present a pathogen in some form, or its parts, to alert the immune system to mount a response. Understanding how it all happens isn’t like learning “how the sausage gets made.” Knowledge may quell fears.

What’s Genetics Got To Do With It?

The public has had a crash course in biology these past six months. While grasping the basics of epidemiology relies on common sense and logic – masks minimize spread of virus-laden aerosols and droplets – the immunology and genetics behind vaccine action may be less familiar.

People know sun-moon-earth, the three types of rocks, the three types of subatomic particles. But how many can quickly recite the three levels of genetic information: DNA, RNA, and protein?

A gene is a sequence of DNA building blocks that encodes a protein, via an intermediate molecule, messenger RNA (mRNA). So important is this trajectory that geneticists have called it “the central dogma” since Francis Crick’s team deciphered the details in 1961.

Today, understanding the flow of genetic information guides vaccine invention. All present a pathogen or a part of one to the immune system – but they do so differently.

Like identifying a criminal from a distinguishing facial feature, the immune system – a mobile army of white blood cells – zooms in on surface features, or antigens, of a virus. For the coronaviruses, the most pursued antigens are the triplets of spike proteins that festoon their surfaces like a crown (“Covid 19 Vaccine Will Close in on the Spikes” from DNA Science back at the beginning of the pandemic.) And that’s where the central dogma comes in. Vaccines can deliver spike protein, the DNA sequence that tells the human cell to make the corresponding mRNA, or the mRNA sequence directly, unleashing the instructions for cell parts to come together and build the protein.

Five Types of COVID-19 Vaccines

The global effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine is unprecedented. ClinicalTrials.gov lists more than 225 entries, but half aren’t really vaccines or are revamped old ones. The WHO maintains a list and STAT News’s Covid-19 Drugs & Vaccine Tracker is also excellent. Health and Human Services offers a vaccine primer here, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) website describes vaccine candidates.

The vaccine roster includes traditional strategies like entire disabled viruses that fool the immune system and molecular approaches that instruct it. Proteins, DNA, or RNA can’t cause infection and fit into platforms developed in recent years to treat other emerging infectious diseases. And DNA or RNA sequences can be tweaked – “optimized” – to elicit specific responses.

The candidate COVID vaccines can be grouped in various ways, lumping molecular techniques or defining them more granularly. I prefer five categories:

• Inactivated virus
• Vectored viruses
• Protein
• DNA
• RNA

Here’s how they work, roughly organized by decreasing size. Each category includes multiple candidate vaccines – I quickly gave up trying to mention all the companies.

Inactivated Whole Virus

Various techniques tame the virus for use as a vaccine, rendering it “inactivated” – a virus isn’t considered alive, so it can’t be killed.

One inactivated vaccine, from Chinese company Sinovac working with Indonesian company PT Bio Farma, is whole virus inactivated with formalin, a fixative consisting of formaldehyde in water. It’s given with a generalized immune booster, or adjuvant. The Sinovac adjuvant is alum, otherwise used to pickle, bake, tan leather, fireproof, and it’s in aftershave. The vaccine is called CoronaVac, which sounds to me like a vacuum cleaner. Adjuvants are common vaccine components.

A related approach is a “virus-like-particle,” which resembles a virus on the outside but is empty of genetic material, a little like a hollow Tootsie roll.

Live vaccines are being developed in India. The genetic material of these viruses is modified to impair ability to infect.

Viral Vectored Vaccines

In math a vector is an arrow; in infectious disease, it delivers a pathogen, like a mosquito. Viruses are used in gene therapy to deliver genes. That approach is harnessed in vaccinology to deliver a pathogen’s gene, such as the SARS-CoV-2 gene that encodes the spike protein.

The most-publicized variation-on-the-theme is ChAdOx1, from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. It retools a chimpanzee adenovirus, chosen in the hopes that people wouldn’t already be immune to it, which could spike a reaction. The Russian vaccine also uses adenovirus.

Adenovirus vectors can’t replicate, but a few clinical trials are testing viruses that can reproduce, including influenza viruses, measles, and horsepox.

A vectored vaccine that delivers instructions for more than the spike might induce broader immunity, like deploying multiple weapons against an enemy. A “synthetic mini-gene” from Shenzhen Geno-Immune Medical Institute in China, for example, harnesses disabled HIV to deliver instructions for the five major SARS-CoV-2 proteins.

Protein

A vaccine that consists of a pathogen’s protein or part of it (a peptide), typically one from its surface like the spike, is called a subunit vaccine. Many subunit vaccines use recombinant DNA technology to mass-produce the protein in cells, like human insulin made in bacteria, rather than extracting it from viruses.

Novavax.com’s version has a proprietary adjuvant, like it’s own secret sauce. Kentucky Bioprocessing makes their vaccine in cells from tobacco plants, and Sanofi Pasteur/GSK uses armyworms. Their vaccine adapts Sanofi’s flu vaccine platform with GSK’s adjuvant. Clover Biopharmaceuticals’ entrant is spike triplets, echoing the topography of the viral surface.

A DNA-based vaccine must enter the nucleus of a cell when it’s dividing – the only time when the nuclear membrane falls away. These vaccines are engineered using bioinformatics to analyze and compare the thousands of published SARS-CoV-2 genomes.

The contenders for DNA vaccines differ by how they penetrate cells. Like the recombinant DNA technology from the 1970s that underlies protein-based COVID vaccines, the DNA-based ones also use 1970s strategies, blasting DNA into cells with electricity (electroporation) and/or aboard a naturally-occurring DNA loop called a plasmid. Inovio’s plasmid “DNA medicine” vaccine, for example, is a bit of spike DNA shot into skin or muscle cells using a proprietary hand-held smart device.

mRNA

Moderna Therapeutics’ “mRNA-1273” is a synthetic snippet corresponding to part of spike mRNA. The mRNA is tucked into fatty nanoparticles that resemble cell membranes, so the bubbles can enter like Trojan horses. The human cells then translate the mRNA into spikes, like they would mRNA exiting their own nuclei. What’s more, the mRNA is engineered to favor the part of the immune response that attacks viruses while quelling inflammation, and is more stable than its natural counterpart.

Although no RNA-based vaccine is yet on the market, Moderna has been working with the NIH on developing RNA vaccines to prevent other viral diseases (MERS, Zika, respiratory syncytial virus, Epstein-Barr, and H7N9 influenza). It was easy to pivot to a new pathogen within days of publication of the first SARS-CoV-2 genome from Wuhan on January 11. Another oft-mentioned mRNA-based vaccine is from BioNTech and Pfizer.

Vaccines based on mRNA offer some advantages:
• The lipid nanotechnology is already in place from work on small interfering RNAs.
• They elicit B cell (antibody) and T cell (CD4 helpers and CD8 killers) immune responses. That’s possible because our cells make the spikes.
• People can’t have immunity to RNA as they can to the adenoviruses used in vectored vaccines.
• An mRNA vaccine can be fashioned to encode antigens from several pathogens – a prototype targets 20! Imagine a pediatric vaccine that covers several illnesses.

Theoretically, an mRNA vaccine is safe. It can’t enter the nucleus and tweak gene expression. It leaves the bloodstream in a few hours, and it can’t infect. But the phase 3 trials are crucial, because so many people have never taken such a vaccine before. Four of the 45 people in Moderna’s phase 1 safety trial had a whole-body reaction, three after receiving the highest dose.

Why Take a Vaccine?

I just received an email rejecting my application to take part in the Moderna clinical trial – more than 400,000 people applied. I suspect my living in a small town where social distancing preceded 2020 made me a less-than-ideal candidate.

Looking ahead, deciding whether or not to take a vaccine is a personal choice that, collectively and ultimately, affects a population. Natural infection – even if it spreads like wildfire as the unmasked continue to flout public health recommendations – won’t be enough to establish herd immunity, especially if the antibody response is transient and reinfection possible.

We need something more than what nature, time, thoughts, and prayers can provide. I hope this short guide informs choices, when the time comes, to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Discussion
  1. My concern regarding the mRNA method is that it is genetic engineering. The mRNA contains the information that results in the creation of a new protein in the body. My concern stems from the fact that there is no way to predict the short or long term effects of this modified protein.
    As was seen in plant genetic engineering, scientists thought they were modifying only one “component” of the plant. What we have since learned is that the tweaking of a protein can both up and down regulate many other genetic effects, that are completely unpredictable with our present level of knowledge.The GMO corn’s pollen is toxic to some insects and is attributed for being responsible for the massive die off of Monarch butterflies. Certain varieties of GMO cotton have resulted in never before seen symptoms of farm workers developing skin eruptions when handling the cotton. A clinical trial of GMO potatoes resulted in the European Union banning GMO products from their countries. There is a very long list of unintended effects from genetically modified crops.
    Because the DNA sequence is so complex and we have no where near a of even a good understanding mush less a complete understanding of the far reaching effects of tweaking genetic proteins, it seems to me we are treading on very dangerous ground with the mRNA vaccines.

  2. Thank you for sharing this. An interesting read. I agree that we’re all suddenly needing to know more about this in a crash course. Could I ask your opinion on vacations such as DNA or RNA and find out whether they have a long lasting impact on our genetics? There is of course, no data set that can show longer implications of a vaccination but I am wanting to understand the affects this may have on our DNA. Do they change the way in which our DNA works?

    Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

  3. Not clear, too scientific. Rewrite get straight to the point(is it safe to take the vaccine or not). Where is your proof that the vaccine does not enter the nucleus. How can electrically shocked vaccine injections not alter or affect cell structure.

    1. Nothing is completely safe and “proof” is not a scientific concept. I prefer to compare and weigh risks. For me – not necessarily you – the risk of the vaccine, from what I know, is less than the risk of what could happen to me if I were infected. Personal choice – no one is compelled to take a vaccine. I think that herd immunity unfortunately will remain more a concept than a reality, with the extent of vaccine hesitancy. We will have to await evolution.

  4. It does not convince me to get a vaccine. There are way too many doubts, trials that haven’t been tested, wacky adjuvants. This sounds more like bio experiments. For someone with your knowledge to peddle this vaccine as important over natural reaction to the virus is unprofessional and deadly. By advocating lockdown which you must, you are killing more people through cancelled surgery, inactivity and anxiety worsened underlying illnesses than ‘allegedly’ saving people with the vaccine. The flu jab is a joke. I am 51, only had the flu vaccine once. Had flu every two years or so mostly a mild cold. Common sense, not overdoing it, good diet and being fit fights off these corona viruses. You know like I know this Covid is a sham, an excuse to change society with the medical profession lying, lying, lying. I now have more fear in ever going to a hospital due to the knowledge of how widespread the lying is. I am a freelance journalist and our profession mostly is complicit. No investigations into the severity of Covid. Nothing almost WORLDWIDE. Stinks. No I will not get any vaccine.

    1. There is no reason to get personal over this, or to assume that you know what I know. “You know like I know” is quite arrogant. I try to explain things, based on what I know from having written life science textbooks for 40 years. What is your training in science? Opinion is fine, but best backed up with facts.

  5. “Theoretically the mRNA vaccine is safe” doesn’t quite cut it. Lots of things sound safe on paper, but put them into practice and there can be allsorts of negative consequences and as you say the phase 3 trials are crucial because whilst indications show some safety in the short term we don’t know whether they’re safe or not long term which is why they shouldn’t be mandated. What happens to the white blood cells over time? Do they weaken, do they get over stimulated? With each dose how does this effect the white blood cells, will they stop working altogether, will they start attacking other white blood cells? No one knows and there are no reassurances because all liability has been removed so if this turns out to be a worldwide catastrophic disaster there is no one to hold to account.

    1. I agree we must wait to see what happens. But as far as I know, the vaccine mRNA doesn’t get into the bone marrow, and it would have to do that to affect the production of white blood cells, although it could enter the rate hematopoietic stem cells in the circulation. I don’t think we could have afforded to wait the 5-10 years it normally takes to develop and sufficiently test a vaccine. I’m older, I wouldn’t have wanted to take the good chance of dying. COVID-19 was and remains an emergency, and that’s why the “approval” – which isn’t really that – is called an “emergency use authorization.” An individual isn’t forced to take a vaccine, and when you get one, you get lots of papers explaining the risks.

  6. Thank you for this informative article. Just a quick question, the newly cases of blood disorder after mRNA vaccine is puzzling to me. Do you think mRNA delivered via this vaccine affect the blood cell? Meaning it accidently instructs the blood cell make spike protein which the immune system attacks?

    1. Which type of blood cell? And which type of blood disorder? The mRNA will get into any cells that have ACE2 receptors, and that would include some blood cells. I don’t know whether dendritic cells are considered white blood cells.

  7. Seek information on the dna inserted in cell nuclei by Astrazeneca technique. When does the new dna start producing RNA? Is there an off switch?
    Given the normal cell DNA is opening and closing all the time will the new dna be incorporated into the person’s DNA?

  8. Hi Ricki,

    I appreciate the calmness in which you respond to your audience with. I have a couple of questions:

    1. In the ingredients of the Moderna vaccine, there is ‘recombinant’. I assume that’s referring to recombinant DNA, correct? If so, isn’t that just a general term? Wouldn’t it be more useful to tell us exactly what recombinant DNA is included? Theoretically, couldn’t the enzyme that’s used for reverse transcriptase be included within the rDNA? That would, theoretically, make it possible for the mRNA to create cDNA (complementary DNA), which is synthetic, correct?

    2. If we’re given a vaccine that would cause our body to strengthen or prefer an adaptive immune response over an innate immune response when confronted with a type of coronavirus, wouldn’t it be possible that the b and t cells attack our innate white blood cells? I read about enhanced immune response and pathogenic priming and it seemed like reasonable concerns.

    I’m not a scientist, by any means, I’m just a concerned citizen doing my best to be educated about this stuff, as it seems to be moving faster than most people are able to follow. I’m a web developer and the mRNA sounds like a sort of software update or anti-virus, but I fear that it may result in constant updates and/or boosters in the future.

    Thanks for the article and for answering our questions.

    1. Thanks Bill. Recombinant what, exactly? The term just really means from 2 sources, and historically referred to things like a human insulin gene spliced into a bacterial genome. Yes reverse transcriptase could lead to a DNA version, but I don’t see how that could be harmful. I also can’t imagine how the mRNA could wind itself back into the nucleus and do some damage there, as many people have suggested. Can any readers expand on this?

  9. Hi Ricki,

    Regarding how the synthesized DNA can make it’s way into the nucleus:

    After further research, I see that HIV-1 gp120 is actually included in the spike protein. From what I understand, gp120 plays a key role in nuclear migration. Again, I’m not scientist, but it seems to trigger the activation of actin regulators such as cofilin and the LIM domain kinase to increase actin dynamics. “It has becom eevident that a dynamic cytoskeleton is important for viral entry, postentry DNA synthesis, and nuclear migration in resting T cells”.

    Here is the article: https://retrovirology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4690-9-45

    As far as the 2nd question (The adaptive immune response (b and t cells or lymphocytes) being preferred over the (innate immune response or monocytes), would that not create a significant dependency on a vaccine once the next wave of virus evolves (or a new, more serious variant emerges)? Wouldn’t that be how Antibody-dependent enhancement and/or cytokine storm happens?

    Thanks for trying to answer these questions, Ricki!

    1. Thanks, I’m still trying to wrap my head around this gp120 thing and I so appreciate the citation. Rudy Jaenisch (stem cell guru) tried to publish on this, the mRNA getting into the nucleus, but the preprint never made it to print and now there’s a huge controversy. Stay tuned …

    2. ADE depends on second exposure to the virus antigens. If being vaccinated with the current vaccines caused it, the hospitals would be flooded with vaccinated patients because of exposure to Delta. And they aren’t. Neither do we see the Cytokine storm in the vaccinated. People’s immune response are not going to freak out like you predict.

    3. Exactly, Stephen. The people flooding the hospitals in respiratory distress due to COVID are not the vaxxed. The problem is that much of the general public does not understand, or forgot or never learned, about what vaccines are and how they work. It’s been very frustrating for me, having authored biology textbooks for decades. When I read about the rampant misinformation on the Internet, I just want to scream, pick up a biology textbook! I learned from giving lectures on COVID vaccines that middle schoolers understand immunity and know what mRNA is – but older folks never learned it or forgot it. Then again, I don’t know much about history. But that deficit isn’t threatening my life, or endangering others. Thanks for your response!

  10. Hi Ricki,

    Regarding how the synthesized DNA can make it’s way into the nucleus:

    After further research, I see that a glycoprotein that’s very similar to HIV-1 gp120 is actually included in the spike protein. From what I understand, gp120 plays a key role in nuclear migration. Again, I’m not scientist, but it seems to trigger the activation of actin regulators such as cofilin and the LIM domain kinase to increase actin dynamics. “It has become evident that a dynamic cytoskeleton is important for viral entry, postentry DNA synthesis, and nuclear migration in resting T cells”.

    Here is the article: https://retrovirology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4690-9-45

    As far as the 2nd question (The adaptive immune response (b and t cells or lymphocytes) being preferred over the (innate immune response or monocytes), would that not create a significant dependency on a vaccine once the next wave of virus evolves (or a new, more serious variant emerges)? Wouldn’t that be how Antibody-dependent enhancement and/or cytokine storm happens?

    Thanks for trying to answer these questions, Ricki!

  11. hi ricki,

    thanks for adding your voice and knowledge to this.
    i also appreciate your even responses. 🙂

    my biggest concern with the mRNA vaccine is that i can’t find any information on what the synthetic mRNA is made of. i read somewhere that the components are not the same as what your body normally uses to make mRNA. this concerns me because at the end of the process, the synthetic mRNA is deconstructed and its components recycled back into the cell nucleus. so if i understand right, at this point the synthetic material does make its way into the nucleus and may have unintended consequences. do you know of any research or information on this?

    also, do you happen to know if anyone has independently verified the ingredients in the mRNA vaccines? i have trouble accepting the companies’ and the government’s statements about the ingredient list at face value.

    cheerio,
    bubbles

    1. One of the 4 RNA bases is slightly altered, I think the U, not sure. The other factor is codon optimization. The genetic code is the correspondence between mRNA triplets and the amino acids that they encode. Because there are 64 mRNA codons but only 20 amino acids (in organisms), there’s redundancy built into the code. So for example the amino acid proline is encoded by CCU, CCC, CCG, and CCA mRNA triplets. Even though the 4 codons all encode proline, they cause the mRNA that they are part of to curl up into slightly different shapes — some of which are translated into the protein faster than others. Choosing the best of the naturally possible codons is called codon optimization. You can see how this is very difficult to explain, especially with the media’s rampant misuse of the term “genetic code” when they actually mean gene or genome sequence. So I think the mRNA in the vaccines is perfectly safe. It is an unstable molecule (hence the need for freezing) and disappears pretty quickly. I hope this helps a little!

    1. Imagine a magic virus gets dispersed in the air over the US, and 1% of the population just drops dead on contact. How many would that be? 3280? No. 32,800? No. 328,000? Not even that.

      3.28 MILLION. 1% is not an insignificant number to die. In fact it’s horrifically huge as death tolls go. But there’s another side to this, and we see it in stories where people are turned away from one hospital after another, as COVID patients overwhelm the system. Our hospitals are not equipped for dealing with so many people at once.

  12. Hello Ricki

    Given the relative newness of the RNA technology in relation to vaccine development, and to potential unrealised future side effects, would you be happy to recommend this type of vaccine to a family member yet to reach their child bearing years, or would you consider the traditional inactivated virus or vector method safer, even if apparently not as effective? I know there is also a substantial production cost difference in favour of the RNA technology which is certain to be a factor in government provision.

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