3 ms·

so mRNA vaccination is an offshoot towards technology which was created about a decade and a half ago to make more efficient monoclonal antibodies for the lab.

so mRNA vaccination is an offshoot towards technology which was created about a decade and a half ago to make more efficient monoclonal antibodies for the lab. The process is to extract B-cells from a challenged organism (almost always mouse) and then fuse them as 'hybridomas' with immortal cancer cells, select single cell clumps that show an immune response out of multi-well plates, and then use those immortalized cells to make that one antibody forever. So indeed the mRNA vaccines come from technology that is highly optimized to elicit a B-cell response. (Not to say that it doesn't stimulate T-cells, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't).

rotexo 6y ago
Wait I’m a little confused. It seems like injecting people with an mRNA, which their cells then translate into an antigen that provokes an immune response, is a very different technology from monoclonal antibodies. They are both related to the immune system, but mRNA vaccines are at least partially about stimulating polyclonal antibody production, as opposed to monoclonal antibodies. Can you articulate why you think mRNA vaccines were derived from monoclonal antibody work?
- dnautics 6y ago
  I just remember talks (I was at a cutting-edge immunology research center, The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego) about using mRNA vaccination in the 2007-2009 era to make monoclonal antibodies. Oddly, I can't find any publications from that era on it (but I can find a few papers from 2017-2019 using that exact methodology), so it appears that either i was mistaken, or it quietly pivoted to human vaccination as a target. It's really not possible for me to be mistaken about the timeframe, though, since I have been out of biology since 2015.
DrAwdeOccarim 6y ago
The mRNA vaccine field isn't related to monoclonal antibody production.
twic 6y ago
This is very confused. The hybridoma process you describe is the only way to make monoclonal antibodies, not a more efficient way, and it was invented in the early 1970s. It has nothing to do with mRNA vaccines.

rotexo 6y ago

Wait I’m a little confused. It seems like injecting people with an mRNA, which their cells then translate into an antigen that provokes an immune response, is a very different technology from monoclonal antibodies. They are both related to the immune system, but mRNA vaccines are at least partially about stimulating polyclonal antibody production, as opposed to monoclonal antibodies. Can you articulate why you think mRNA vaccines were derived from monoclonal antibody work?

dnautics 6y ago
I just remember talks (I was at a cutting-edge immunology research center, The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego) about using mRNA vaccination in the 2007-2009 era to make monoclonal antibodies. Oddly, I can't find any publications from that era on it (but I can find a few papers from 2017-2019 using that exact methodology), so it appears that either i was mistaken, or it quietly pivoted to human vaccination as a target. It's really not possible for me to be mistaken about the timeframe, though, since I have been out of biology since 2015.

DrAwdeOccarim 6y ago

The mRNA vaccine field isn't related to monoclonal antibody production.

twic 6y ago

This is very confused. The hybridoma process you describe is the only way to make monoclonal antibodies, not a more efficient way, and it was invented in the early 1970s. It has nothing to do with mRNA vaccines.