The Current - mRNA

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

mRNA vaccines saved millions of lives during the pandemic. But now, that science is under political attack in the United States. Funding is being pulled, approvals are being delayed, and the science questioned by politicians. Science journalist Elie Dolgin joins us to explain how a technology once hailed as revolutionary is now facing an existential threat — and what that could cost in the fight against diseases.

Hi, I'm Gavin Crawford, the host of Because News, Canada's funniest news quiz. Every week we make jokes out of the headlines with help from a panel of brilliant comedians like Alice Moran. Hi there, I'm a sweet little Alberta dirtbag with very gentle takes. They call me light, sweet, and crude. Half your job is making jokes, but the other half is scoring points. What subjects do you net the most points in? Sports, but also space, because I went to space camp so much as a kid not to brag. That's the exact amount of knowledge you need for this show. Stay vaguely informed while in good

company. With me. Listen to Because News, available wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. Five years ago, with the world in the grips of a serious pandemic, news about vaccines could not come soon enough. I have really good news. Today our nation has achieved a medical miracle. We have delivered a safe and effective vaccine in just nine months. This is one of the greatest scientific accomplishments in history. It will save millions of lives and soon end the pandemic once and for all. U.S. President Donald Trump trumpeted the news back in 2020.

The key to these new vaccines was mRNA technology. A sign of hope today. Moderna announcing its vaccine could be up to 94.5 percent effective in protecting people from COVID-19. Promising news today on a COVID vaccine, drug maker Pfizer announcing its vaccine is showing to be 90 percent effective in trials. Both Pfizer and Moderna developed their coronavirus vaccines using mRNA, but what exactly does that mean and why is it so groundbreaking? Well, those vaccines-

You get just that piece of information that tells your immune system to create the exact kind of immunity that really hurts the virus and nothing else. Those mRNA vaccines did, in fact, save millions of lives over the course of the pandemic. Two of the scientists behind the mRNA vaccine technology went on to receive the Nobel Prize in 2023, and the scientific research exploded on how mRNA might be used to fight things like cancer and HIV.

Lately, though, that research has been under threat in the United States, at least. Donald Trump's widespread cuts to scientific funding are taking aim at mRNA projects and companies that make mRNA vaccines say they are facing an existential threat. Ailey Dahlgren is a science journalist who has written about mRNA vaccines for the journal Nature. He's in our Boston studio. Ailey, good morning. Good morning.

How has the Trump administration specifically been taking aim at mRNA science? In a number of ways. For one thing, they've been cutting academic research grants to anything related to COVID and anything related to coronavirus and pandemic preparedness. So a lot of that work has to do with mRNA in addition to just the broader cuts to medical research. And it all sort of came to a head just a couple weeks ago when they terminated a really large grant worth more than $750 million to develop a vaccine based on mRNA for bird flu. That was awarded to Moderna, but then they terminated it.

What did you make of that? I mean, I wanna talk more about what's going on, but that development in particular, given concerns around bird flu, caught a lot of people's attention. What did you make of that? I think there's a few things happening at once here, all of it kind of driven by the current HHS secretary, the

top health administrator, RFK Jr. And it's a combination of just anti-vaccine sentiment that he and many of his supporters have had for years, an aversion to anything to do with COVID or pandemic preparedness. And then all of that kind of gets tied up with mRNA kind of indirectly in some of the misconceptions around the technology. It seems like a big change for Donald Trump, not just based on, you know, what he was saying. We played a little bit of that during the pandemic,

but also what, like, wasn't it the day after he moved back into the White House that he held an event that was in some ways talking about how mRNA could be used for cancer treatments? Yeah, he was announcing a big AI push and one of the leaders of that touted mRNA and using artificial intelligence to inform the design of an mRNA vaccine for cancer. So for sure, people at first thought, okay, this is going to be great. We've got the president who backed Operation Warp Speed back in the office. Here he is touting mRNA technology as a therapeutic for cancer.

But then all of the anti-vaccine sentiment from COVID kind of caught up and then everything turned a bit darker. And the arrival of RFK Jr. in that important health and human services position seems to be a catalyst for this. He replaced everybody on the advisory committee on vaccines with some people who are questioning vaccine safety. What's the impact of that? Yeah, he kicked out all the experts and brought in eight new people, at least three of whom have been outspoken critics or skeptics of mRNA vaccines, especially around COVID. And this speaks to some of the kind of the problem here is that I think in a lot of the mind of the medical freedom movement, as a lot of RFK

supporters are called, they've kind of misconstrued mRNA vaccines and COVID vaccines. They kind of all get wrapped up into the culture wars that emerged around the vaccine mandates and the rollout and everything. And so mRNA being kind of synonymous with COVID, it becomes a target when really it's a much larger technology, one of the most exciting technologies in biomedical research, but it's on the chopping block now because of its COVID connections. Tell me more about that. And what is it about that technology that, as you said, part of this is about the conflation between mRNA and COVID vaccines, but what is it about that technology that, as you said, part of this is about the conflation between mRNA and COVID vaccines, but what is it about mRNA vaccines that make them such a target?

Well, I think what made it such an amazing scientific advance was the speed with which you can design an mRNA vaccine, the mRNA being the code for making proteins in our body. And so you can synthetically design an mRNA vaccine, basically in a weekend, as Moderna did back at the beginning of the pandemic, and have it ready to be tested in mice, and then you go through the process in human trials and such. And that's what allowed us to have the COVID vaccines in less than a year, back in 2020.

But that same speed concerns a lot of people, because it was the fastest developed medicine in history. And so people think it was rushed. And then that leads to all these concerns that the safety wasn't really tested or that it was actually intentionally buried by the Biden administration. There's a lot of conspiracy theories around that. I mean, the conspiracy theories also get stuck to the technology itself, right?

Oh, for sure. Because it's mRNA, it sounds like DNA, people think it changes your genome, which it does not. And like all medical products, it does have side effects, especially in young men. If you get the two shots too close together, there's a real risk of a heart inflammation side effect. But these are, you know, well documented and are not kind of things that we can't deal with.

You just space them apart for that age demographic. These vaccines, the COVID ones, have gone into the arms of billions of people. I mean, they are the most widely used medicine in history, and so they really do have a long track record of safety and efficacy. There was a lot of excitement, as I said, about the possibility of this technology being used to fight other wicked problems, cancer, among them, you mentioned the bird flu vaccine as well. In your reporting, you spoke with an organization

that represents companies involved in MRI and 8 technology. They said that the bottom has fallen out. Tell me more about that and the impact of what we're talking about on future vaccine development and approval. Well, business hates uncertainty. And so what basically companies don't know is what is the FDA that regulates these medicines? What are they actually going to think when you try to apply to run a trial or try to

get marketing approval for a product? That's happening at the same time that government contracts are being cut, like the one that happened for Moderna. And so there's just a general fear about how these medicines will be received, both by the public and then more short-term actually by the government administrators that would regulate these products. You spoke with some people in your reporting who only agreed to be quoted anonymously. Why was that? I think in general, there's just a fear of reprisal.

Nobody wants to put their head above the parapet and be attacked by the Trump administration. So yeah, many of the executives I spoke with just didn't want to be identified by name, but they told me that some of the policies have really hurt their bottom line if they are companies that manufacture mRNA for research or that they're really thinking about changing their development pipelines, avoiding vaccines altogether just because it's such a hot button issue or possibly moving such trials to other countries, including Canada.

One of the things you said in that piece was that the brand in some ways of mRNA has been damaged. You heard Donald Trump, he was ecstatic about, and this is Trump 1. know, 1.0 talking about operation warp speed, which is this program that developed these, these vaccines in, in lightning speed, is there a way to rebrand mRNA and maybe change the president's mind on, on how he sees

these, the potential of these vaccines? That's what some of the advocates for the technology are hoping. There does seem to be a real tension between Trump himself, who is still proud of Operation Warp Speed. I think from people I've talked to that are close to him, he draws a distinction between what he did back in 2020 and then the actual rollout of the vaccines

and what Biden did after he left. But on the other hand, you have people like RFK and many of the people that he's brought into the agency who are very powerful, who are very powerful. And if Trump doesn't really care, he kind of will let them do what they want essentially. But the move that a lot of the insiders in the industry are trying to do is kind of appeal to Trump's ego, essentially, and say, you know, here's a technology and a whole industry that blossomed because of you, Mr. President. And not only that, but you now have the chance to, say, cure cancer, at least make a huge dent in it,

which was something that Joe Biden had made a top priority of his administration. And nothing Trump loves more than giving it to Biden if he can do something that Biden wasn't able to achieve. So I think they're trying to appeal to that, use flattery and charm and say, you should support this technology and not undercut it. If they don't do that, and if they're not successful at that, just before I let you go, what do you think the long tail of this is?

What is the impact on public health? There's all sorts of amazing medicines that could be developed with this technology that just won't be, from vaccines for herpes or HIV or norovirus to all sorts of these therapeutics for cancer or rare diseases. People might have heard of Baby KJ, this amazing infant that had a super rare disease and they were able to develop a kind of gene therapy, a kind of next generation CRISPR-like thing and correct his disease in six months from his birth, they were able to develop this medicine using mRNA. And none of these things will be developed at least not in the United

States where a lot of the technology originated if the technology is essentially cut entirely and deemed unsafe for reasons of not science but but policy and and politics. Haley good to speak with you thank you very much. Well thanks for having me. Hayley Dahlgren is a science journalist based in Boston. Is drinking raw milk safe like RFK jr suggests? Can you reduce a glucose spike if you eat your food in quote-unquote the right order?

I'm registered dietitian Abby Sharp. I host a nutrition myth busting podcast called Bite Back with Abbey Sharp. And those are just some of the questions I tackle with qualified experts on my show. On Bite Back, my goal is to help listeners create a pleasurable relationship with food, their body and themselves, which in my opinion is the fundamental secret to good health. Listen to Bite Back wherever you get your podcasts. fundamental secret to good health. Listen to Bite Back wherever you get your podcasts. As Ailey mentioned, as colleagues in the United States face this crisis, mRNA researchers

here in Canada are continuing their work. Among those researchers is Anna Bleakney. She's an assistant professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories and School of Biomedical Engineering at UBC. She's in our Vancouver studio. Anna, good morning to you. Good morning. Do you want to pick up on what we were just talking about with Ailey there? How concerned

are you about what you are seeing and hearing about coming out of the United States? Yeah, I mean, as Canadian researchers, I think we all really feel for our colleagues in the U.S. who have had their grants cut and are experiencing all these funding uncertainty, which is, you know, the granting system is already uncertain enough. And so it's really difficult to see that. But you know, it's not necessarily a boon to Canada, right? It affects the whole system. We have many trainees that go there and, you know, get jobs.

And so I think we're all watching with apprehension as well. What have they told you, your colleagues south of the border about, I mean, are they hammering the brakes on projects and things that were in motion and now suddenly have come to a dead stop because of what Ailey was saying, politics interfering with science? Yeah, for sure. So I think, you know, for NIH projects that have been cut, you know, that, that really is like money not in an account,

right? So you can't pay for experiments, you can't pay salaries. And so I do think that means that a lot of those projects will come to a screeching halt. Have you heard about specific projects that have stopped? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, one of the key words for many of these NIH cuts was mRNA vaccines, right? And so you can think about all the vaccines that are in development for many of these NIH cuts was mRNA vaccines, right? And so you can think about all the vaccines that are in development for many infectious diseases

that we don't currently have treatments for, or diseases that are potential outbreaks, and lots of people are working on those. And just as a kind of blunt cut, now they're not able to continue developing the platform, those vaccines, and so, you know, in the same way that we were ready for the COVID pandemic, able to continue developing the platform, those vaccines. And so, you know, in the same way that we were ready for the COVID pandemic, we may not be ready for another type of outbreak.

Do you see as somebody who's living and working in Canada, do you see attitudes toward vaccines here changing? I mean, the Alberta government announced that it was going to make most people pay for the COVID vaccines. And the announcement from the government said that in parts, this is because the United States recently stopped recommending the COVID vaccine for pregnant women and healthy children. So are you seeing, not to the same degree perhaps, but some change in attitudes to vaccines

here in this country? Yeah, I think that's absolutely true, but I'm not sure that it's that new, right? And one thing that I think that's absolutely true, but I'm not sure that it's that new, right? And, you know, one thing that I think is especially important is a lot of this is around mRNA vaccines in particular, right? And this is, I think, a bit complicated. Now we greatly associate mRNA vaccines with the COVID pandemic. It's become really, like, politicized and, yeah, part of a discussion that it's not just purely scientific anymore but you know I always ask students in my class when

you get another type of vaccine do you know what type of vaccine it is or who made it and likely you don't and so I think that's a really interesting phenomena with the mRNA vaccine so I I think people have a lot of hesitation around the mRNA vaccines because they just have never heard about the technology and don't necessarily understand how it works. And I totally understand that, but I don't think the answer is not using mRNA vaccines.

I think it's educating people and understanding and answering their questions about them. You understand that. I mean, and again, this is not, you know, the far reaches of the internet and the deepest conspiracy theories, but people who simply just don't, I didn't know what kind of vaccines, you know, who was making the vaccines or the type of the technology of vaccines before the pandemic rolled around.

You understand people's concern in some ways, but also just the questions that they might be asking about this? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so I started working on mRNA vaccines 10 years ago, and prior to the pandemic, I think there were still a lot of scientists that didn't really know what mRNA vaccines were. And so I really empathize with people when, you know, it's this brand new technology, you've never heard of it before, you're hearing that it's the first time it's ever being approved.

Of course, that comes with questions. And I actually think it's really positive to ask those questions and really understand what you're putting in your body. So what do we do with that then? If that in part is leading to the fear that people have that can amplify into political action to demonize or perhaps put the brakes on this technology, how do you address that?

Yeah, I think there's kind of two aspects to it. So I just don't think we can talk about it enough and understand like how the technology actually works and, you know, the safety and efficacy data that we have around these. So, you know, Ailey mentioned that we have, you know, billions of people have had these vaccines now. And so we have probably the most robust, you know, safety profile of any vaccine in history. So I think that should actually be a comfort to people. We know all the potential side effects and how to manage everything now.

And I think another aspect to it is, you know, it's not just a COVID vaccine, right? It's a platform that we can use for many different applications. And I think that's what's really exciting about the technology, is it's not just for preventing infectious diseases, but, you know, take for example, would you feel differently about an mRNA vaccine that you use for a personalized cancer vaccine? This is a technology that's really coming online, right? So you take a sample out of a patient's tumor, you see what new antigens are there on their cancer, and then you make a vaccine against that for that patient,

and mRNA enables you to turn that around in the course of a few weeks, so that you can actually treat some of these cancer in that time. So I think people would feel very differently about it too, if they understand the potential of the technology, and that it's useful for so many things in our society. And so it's a worthwhile investment because of that.

You said something really interesting, which is people need to understand how this technology works. Can you give me an mRNA 101 in like a minute? And I ask that in part because Ailey raised the point that during the pandemic, when these vaccines were being developed, the conspiracy theories led people to conflate mRNA and DNA,

and people thought it was changing. Give me the thumbnail sketch for people who don't understand how this works. Yeah, absolutely. So from a vaccine context, what are we trying to do with any vaccine? We're trying to train your immune system to recognize a pathogen that it's never seen. So how do we do that? We're trying to train it usually

to recognize one specific protein on that pathogen that it's never seen. So how do we do that? We're trying to train it usually to recognize one specific protein on that pathogen. And so we need to introduce that protein into your body and there's a variety of ways we can do that, right? So historically we used just the inactivated virus to do that, then technology moved on and we were able to manufacture the proteins themselves. And mRNA is a bit different in that

instead of giving you the protein directly, we give your body the code to make that protein instead. So in that way, we can train your immune system to recognize a virus like COVID, but also to recognize cancerous cells in your own body. You're here in this country doing this work. And as I mentioned, you were doing this before you were with a team in the UK that was helping develop an mRNA COVID vaccine. One of the things that we have been talking about

a lot on our program is given the chaos unfolding in the academic sector in the United States right now, there are opportunities for Canadian universities and Canadian researchers to bring people here, to bring some of those best minds into this country. What do you see as the opportunity? Yeah, you know, I think we really have an opportunity here to recruit talent, right,

at all different levels, whether it's at the faculty level, but also post-docs and students who may want to work on these really exciting projects, but may not feel safe to do so in the US. So, you know, I think it's a great opportunity. I think, yeah, we should make the most of it while it's still happening. What do we need to do to make the most of it, aside from saying you're welcome here?

I think what we really need is, you know, we can't ignore the fact that obviously when people come here, we need funds to do so, right? So I think it would be present at a federal level to create funding for faculty positions, for postdocs, for grad students who want to come here and contribute, because overall, it's just, you know, a contribution to the economy, right? Like, the government has already made, you know, big contributions and investments in, you know in different pandemic preparedness, one

that Peter Kullis and I lead here at UBC, and really building out both the research and development, but the infrastructure for this platform. And so I think we can continue to build on that and be leaders in this space. Can I end with just like two paths of a possible future? And one is, I mean, the president talked in, you know,

that clip that we played from 2020 in the heart of COVID about this being a medical miracle in some ways, the creation of this technology and how it was applied to the COVID pandemic. If that technology is put on the shelf, if it becomes politically untenable to continue working in that field, what do you think this is going to mean for all of us? Yeah, I mean, I think in a way it was a miracle, but it was a miracle that people worked on for

many decades, right? So it didn't just appear overnight. And because of that, there is actually a lot of momentum in the field, right? It's not just in the US. Actually, a lot of this technology was developed by Peter Koles at UBC and the various companies that he started that are still in Vancouver, right? So Acutus was the company that formulated the Pfizer and Beyond Tech vaccine. So there's still a lot of momentum. I think it's just maybe the momentum will shift to other countries around the world. But I don't think the technology overall is going anywhere. So you're not particularly concerned about I mean, one of the the worries people have is that our ability to fight future pandemics, for example, will be

hobbled by decisions being made, you know, at the highest levels of the US government. You're not particularly concerned about that? I think that is a risk for sure. I think, you know, knowing the changes that are happening and the uncertainty there, it's kind of on other countries, other leadership to build out the response infrastructure in lieu. If we do that, this is the other path. Dream for a second. What is possible with this technology?

Yeah. I mean, here's my vision, which is I think actually quite feasible and not that much of a dream actually, which is the manufacturing of mRNA. This sounds so boring, but it is actually what makes the technology so impressive, right? You manufacture a COVID vaccine, a cancer vaccine, any other sort of treatment in the exact same way. And so you could imagine your local hospital having its own mRNA manufacturing because it's a very small footprint, right? You just need a small room and the trained people to do so. And in that room, they would be able to make, you know, your seasonal COVID or flu vaccine. They could also be making personalized cancer vaccines for patients in that hospital. They could be making, you know, gene therapies

for, you know, for the example of baby KJ and correcting these genetic disorders at birth. And it's actually really not that unrealistic. So that's what I would love to see is that people all over the world having access to this technology for both preventing and treating these diseases that, yeah, I think we have a platform that can really challenge that. And that's within our grasp, you think? I think so, definitely.

Really great to talk to you. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you. Anna Blakeney is an assistant professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories and School of Biomedical Engineering at UBC and Canada Research Chair in Nucleic Acid Bioengineering. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening.

I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.