The rapid development of effective mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 has led some observers to suggest that mRNA will push other types of vaccines out of the market completely in the near future.

But is that desirable? Is it even possible?

Here, experts Jennifer Pancorbo, Gary Gilleskie, and Matt Koci, all of North Carolina State University, dig into mRNA vaccines and their place in the future of the vaccine industry:

Some vaccine industry observers have said mRNA is now poised to push other types of vaccine out of the market. One story quoted an expert as saying “it’s mRNA or nothing.” Do you think the success of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 will lead to mRNA vaccines replacing other forms of vaccine in the near future? If so, why? And if not, why not?

Jennifer Pancorbo: I don’t agree that mRNA vaccines will replace every other type of vaccine, for many reasons.

First, organizations like Moderna and GSK did studies on mRNA back in 2016 and 2017 that looked at several diseases.

Those earlier mRNA vaccines were less effective against those diseases than the new COVID vaccines are against SARS-CoV-2. That’s good news for us today! However, it’s not clear why the mRNA vaccines didn’t work so great against those diseases. That’s something we’d want to understand better before discounting other vaccine technologies.

Second, pharmaceutical companies still need to fix issues with stability and affordability of manufacturing to be able to reach all corners of the world. Shipping and storage of mRNA vaccines still requires infrastructure that is not available in many places. Until then, we will need diversity in the types of vaccines to vaccinate the world.

Lastly, the idea of vaccine democratization relies on the ability of many nations to manufacture their own vaccines. Without scaling up and updating their manufacturing technologies, the facilities in many low- and middle-income countries won’t be able to manufacture mRNA vaccines.

Read the full article about mRNA vaccines by Matt Shipman at Futurity.