S6.17: Vax to the future: The science of DNA and RNA vaccines
Hello, and welcome to Genetics Unzipped, the Genetic Society Podcast with me, Dr Kat Arney. In this episode, we're going "Vax to the Future" to look at the science behind DNA and RNA vaccines. How do they work? What can they do, and how can they be made at scale so that more people around the world can benefit from them?
I’m willing to bet that before 2020, you probably hadn’t heard of RNA vaccines and you almost certainly hadn’t heard of DNA vaccines (unless, of course, you’re a researcher working in that area, in which case high five, thank you!) We took a look at the history of mRNA vaccines back in January 2021 when the first mRNA COVID vaccine programmes began to roll out in some parts of the world. Today we’re going to look to the future, to see what else nucleic acid vaccines - that’s RNA and DNA - are capable of, and discover why the largest DNA factory in the world is a lot smaller than you might expect.
Image courtesy of John Tregoning
John Tregoning: How nucleic acid vaccines can protect us from infectious disease
The history of vaccination against infectious diseases goes back a long way - possibly more than 2,000 years - as people tried to carefully expose themselves to just a little bit of an infection in order to provide protection, primarily from smallpox.
But whether it’s Jenner’s cowpox jab or the Pfizer BioNTech mRNA COVID19 vaccine, they all work in the same basic way - as a kind of biological training programme teaching your immune cells what to look out for and react to when they encounter that particular pathogen for real. But while it seems obvious how dead bacteria or viruses could be effective as a vaccine, it’s a bit more complicated when it comes to nucleic acids.
To find out more, I sat down for a chat with Dr John Tregoning from Imperial College London. He’s an expert on vaccines and respiratory infections, and is also the author of the book Infectious, which is a fascinating tour of all the ways that nature is trying to kill us and how we’re fighting back against it.
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Christian Ottensmeier: Fighting cancer with vaccines
In recent years we’ve seen the rise of immunotherapy for treating cancer - these are drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors that activate immune cells to recognise and destroy tumours. They’ve been transformative for some patients, and netted a Nobel Prize for their discoverers James Allison and Tasuku Honjo, but they don’t work for everyone. So, there’s clearly more that we can do to kick the immune system into action against cancer.
One of the researchers who’s dedicated his career to trying to do just this is Christian Ottensmeier, a consultant medical oncologist and Professor of Immuno-oncology at the University of Liverpool. He’s particularly interested in the promise of vaccines not to prevent cancer, but to treat it once it’s growing in the body, by training immune cells known as T cells to recognise its presence and go on the attack.
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Image courtesy of Christian Ottensmeier
Image courtesy of Lisa Caproni
Lisa Caproni: Inside the DNA factory
DNA and RNA vaccines have huge potential to save lives, not just from infections but from cancer and other diseases too. But, like any other medicine, their successful roll out to as many people as need them around the world depends on being able to make enough, in high enough quality - known as GMP.
Based in west London, Touchlight started out as a biotech company trying to make DNA vaccines. They soon realised that the key bottleneck wasn’t the vaccines themselves, but that there wasn’t really a good way to make large amounts of high quality DNA, not just for vaccines but for other medical applications like gene therapy too. So, they set about trying to develop one.
The result was a technology called doggybone DNA. To find out more I caught up with Lisa Caproni, Director of Platforms at Touchlight.
Click here to read the full transcript…
Coming up from the Genetics Society!
Don’t forget that 1st September is the deadline for the Society’s next round of public engagement grants, with small grants up to £1000 and larger grants up to £5000 available to support online or in-person public engagement activities relevant to genetics. It’s a great opportunity to bring the wonder of genetics to the wider world, or help people engage with complex topics in the field, so if you’re interested in applying then head over to the grants section of The Genetics Society website.
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This episode of Genetics Unzipped was written and presented by Kat Arney. It’s a First Create the Media production for The Genetics Society - one of the oldest learned societies dedicated to promoting research, training, teaching and public engagement in all areas of genetics. You can find out more and apply to join at genetics.org.uk. Our theme music was composed by Dan Pollard, and the logo was designed by James Mayall, audio production was by Emma Werner and the team, and our producer is Sally Le Page. Thanks for listening, and until next time, goodbye.
