In News: The country’s first homegrown mRNA Covid-19 vaccine developed at Pune’s Gennova Biopharmaceuticals has received emergency use for the age group 18 and above.
The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) approved the two-dose mRNA vaccine.
The vaccine is stable for storage at 2-8 degree C.
Vaccines based on mRNA require ultra-low temperature conditions for storage and distribution.
What are mRNA vaccines?
mRNA vaccines trick the body into producing some of the viral proteins itself.
They work by using mRNA, or messenger RNA, which is the molecule that essentially puts DNA instructions into action.
Inside a cell, mRNA is used as a template to build a protein
How it works?
To produce an mRNA vaccine, scientists produce a synthetic version of the mRNA that a virus uses to build its infectious proteins.
This mRNA is delivered into the human body, whose cells read it as instructions to build that viral protein, and therefore create some of the virus’s molecules themselves.
These proteins are solitary, so they do not assemble to form a virus.
The immune system then detects these viral proteins and starts to produce a defensive response to them.
