Why is the vaccine for COVID-19 made faster than the vaccine for cancer or HIV? Maybe this question comes to your mind.
When COVID-19 hit the world since the end of 2019, the development of a corona vaccine was done quickly. This explanation can be answered scientifically.
From a journal published April 2021 in Clinical Cancer Research, titled 'How Can We Get a COVID-19 Vaccine in Less Than 1 Year?' There are three important points regarding the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.
1. The research leading to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine did not start in January 2020 when the RNA sequence of the virus was determined, it actually started more than 15 years ago (or even longer) with the basic science of the biology of the coronavirus.
2. The vaccine platform that forms the backbone of the most advanced SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was not created in 2020, but is still in development and has even been tested on humans, although some are on a larger scale than others,
3. Decades of investment in understanding the mechanisms of vaccine-induced immunity, protection from viral infection, the way in which the immune system produces antibody responses against other parts of the coronavirus provide the basis for starting the fight against SARS-CoV-2.
Further quoting POZ, each disease has its own challenges and cannot be compared to each other. To be clear, unlike HIV and COVID-19, cancer is not an infectious disease caused by a virus (although some viruses such as human papillomavirus can dramatically increase the risk of cancer).
There are many causes of cancer, including genetics, radiation, and chemical agents. In fact, there is one cancer vaccine approved (for prostate cancer) and several are showing promise in clinical trials.
One of the reasons scientists have struggled to develop a vaccine for HIV is because the virus mutates quickly and can evade treatment by hiding inside cells. Other viruses are less 'sly' when compared to HIV.
Successful vaccines for other viruses, such as influenza, rely on inactivated or weakened versions of the virus to make vaccines, but weakened HIV is not yet effective at inducing an immune response and live HIV is too dangerous to use in vaccine form.
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