Covid Vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are the first two to be granted emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. They’re not identical, but they attack the disease using the same method.
The two COVID-19 vaccines use messenger RNA, or mRNA, to deliver a message to your immune system. In this case, the message tells your cells to create a harmless piece of a specific spike protein that’s found on the surface of COVID-19. Your body recognizes that the spike protein doesn’t belong and starts creating antibodies to remove it. In doing so, your body’s immune system becomes prepared to fight the virus if you encounter it.
It’s important to know that mRNA doesn’t affect your genes in any way because it never enters the nucleus of cells, where your DNA is kept. After the mRNA does its job, it breaks down and is flushed out of your system within hours. It’s also important to know that although mRNA technology for vaccines is new, the mRNA technology itself isn’t. Therapies using mRNA have been around for years and are currently being used to treat cancer and viral diseases.
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