This is really great science reporting. I find the potential implementation of mRNA technology across a variety of conditions absolutely fascinating. Of course the flu is something that we continue to battle year after year, and the mention of mRNA technology as a possibility for targeting cancerous cells and treating cystic fibrosis is truly a remarkable future to think about.

I'm interested to see how public health and public health policies evolve over time with mRNA developments as well. Inevitably, the advancements in mRNA will also create societal paradigm shifts.

In a sense, Covid built the infrastructure for the mRNA future. Researchers had always promised it would be cleaner and faster than traditional methods, but now companies are also building the capacity to make billions of doses a year, and it has been tested and found safe in millions of people.

Even the already-streamlined manufacturing process for these vaccines may be about to shrink even further – allowing them to be made not just easier, but virtually anywhere. Because its chemical makeup is relatively simple compared to the whole viruses or living cells we extract for traditional vaccines, mRNA factories need just a fraction of the space. From the size of a “football pitch to a front lawn,” one engineer quipped to me. But there’s no reason they couldn’t get even smaller and simpler. “Like fitting on a desktop, the size of a photocopier. You have your chemicals in a cartridge, and there you go,” says Harris Makatsoris, a professor of sustainable manufacturing systems at King’s College London.