The Sydney Morning Herald
In all the talk about vaccines at the moment as the world struggles to get on top of the COVID-19 pandemic, you might have heard the term ‘mRNA’ to describe a type of vaccine.
This is a new type of vaccine to protect against infectious diseases. Many vaccines put a weakened or inactivated germ into our bodies to trigger an immune response. In comparison, mRNA vaccines teach our cells how to make a protein – or even just a piece of a protein – that triggers an immune response in our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies.
As the national peak body for health and medical research, Research Australia welcomes the Victorian government’s commitment to invest $50 million in an mRNA manufacturing facility. Likewise, we applaud the innovative medical researchers at the Doherty Institute, Monash University and University of Melbourne, who are part of this initial step.
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