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Comment by mellosouls | Hacker News Reader

FWIW: Recent discussion on the female mRNA innovator allegedly sidelined in her academic career. She isn't mentioned in the article either - I've no idea if she should be - but it seems a relevant recent topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25623616

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3

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There is 3 maybe equally important components in the new RNA vaccines:

    Protein: The final product.
    mRNA: the information carrier.
    Lipid bubbles: carrying mRNA into the cells

This article is about the protein. The unmodified virus spike protein is stable only when attached to the protein shell of the virus. These people worked on methods, on how to modify the spike protein so that when it's released alone, without the rest of the virus, it still keeps the same shape and form as when attached to the virus. If you just used to original protein sequence without the rest of the virus, the spike protein would fold into different 3D-shape, and would not work as an antigen. Without this work, the vaccine would not work.

Katalin Karikó invented how to "mask" this foreign mRNA, so human cells accept and use it for protein synthesis. Whereas usually human body attacks foreign RNA vigorously.

The there is the part, where mRNA is packed inside tiny fat bubbles, so it can be transported into human tissue and cells. I think we still haven't seen a submission about this technology here?

this made me curious. it appears the significant advances in liposomes occurred in 1995. i believe doxil was the first drug delivered by a viable liposome product as earlier efforts could not hide the liposomes from the body’s immune system.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01694...

Where can I read more about these technologies and biotech itself? What courses or other learning materials would you recommend?

I'm an absolute beginner, started reading lots of Twitter threads when covid began.

https://twitter.com/PowerDNS_Bert/status/1342568484946010116

TIL. This woman grew up in Soviet Hungaria, and moved to USA.

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