How political attacks could crush the mRNA vaccine revolution
Drug makers are scrambling to navigate an ‘existential threat’ to a once-celebrated technology.
The day after Donald Trump moved back into the White House in January, he celebrated a US$500-billion private-sector investment in artificial intelligence (AI) with a high-profile announcement in the Roosevelt Room. The new president looked on as technology billionaire Larry Ellison highlighted one of the initiative’s most transformative goals: using messenger RNA vaccines to transform cancer treatments.
By harnessing AI to analyse tumour genetics, Ellison explained, researchers could rapidly design personalized vaccines tailored to an individual’s cancer. “This is the promise of AI and the promise of the future,” he said.
Biotechnology executives were elated. Trump had, just five years earlier, propelled mRNA medicines into the spotlight through his signature effort to fast-track the development of a coronavirus vaccine. Now, just one day into his second term, he was once again elevating the technology to the national stage.
“Then the bottom fell out,” says Deborah Day Barbara, co-founder of the Alliance for mRNA Medicines (AMM), a trade group representing more than 75 companies and academic institutions that are advancing mRNA research, development and manufacturing.
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