All this month we are using our blog and social media to highlight a new chapter in CIRM’s life, thanks to the voters approving Proposition 14. We are looking back at what we have done since we were created in 2004, and also looking forward to the future. Today we feature a rare treat, an interview with Moderna’s Dr. Derrick Rossi.
It’s not often you get a chance to sit down with one of the key figures in the fight against the coronavirus and get to pick his brain about the best ways to beat it. We were fortunate enough to do that on Wednesday, talking to Dr. Derrick Rossi, the co-founder of Moderna, about the vaccine his company has developed.
CIRM’s President and CEO, Dr. Maria Millan, was able to chat to Dr. Rossi for one hour about his background (he got support from CIRM in his early post-doctoral research at Stanford) and how he and his colleagues were able to develop the COVID-19 vaccine, how the vaccine works, how effective it is, how it performs against new variations of the virus.
He also told us what he would have become if this science job hadn’t worked out.
All in all it was a fascinating conversation with someone whose work is offering a sense of hope for millions of people around the world.
If you missed it first time around you can watch it here.
The Stem Cellar 
mRNA vaccines have been studied before for flu, Zika, rabies, cytomegalovirus and cancers. However, none of them was successfully treated as a standard treatment for current medicine. mRNA vaccine is the first of kind for emergency used to treat Covid-19 infection during the world is badly hit by pandemic of Covid-19. The mRNA was specifically designed to introduce them into intracellular cell. This small oligonucleotid of mRNA was then hijacked protein mechinary of cell to produce virus spike proteins expressed on surface of cell. These abnormal cells were eventually triggering innate and adoptive immunity in body of human. Nobody knows the extent of effectiveness of mRNA vaccine to hijack the protein mechinenary of cell. In addition, not all the people has similar immunity, individual with high immunity are expected to produce positive result. We have to bear in mind that many factors are elvolved may affect high and low immune response of one person. Whereas people with low immunity are unable to eradicate the abnormal cells. The abnormal cells may ultimately turn into cancer cells. Cancer cells have no stable genotype and phenotype. The alterations of phenotype cells is the cause of concern to eventually change the genetic of cells. Therefore, nobody knows mRNA vaccine bring beneficial to human life or hazardous to human’s health. Anyway, this is an experimental vaccine on human trial, the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccine for long-term benefit and human’s health take serious consideration.