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iguy | 5 years ago

It is exciting. But what's a bit unclear (to me) is how re-usable safety testing is. Are we going to arrive at stage where we can "push to production" after this 48 hour design phase, or are we going to need months-to-years of trials for each new code?

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xiphias2|5 years ago

There's a huge difference between months and years.

The delivery platform is reusable, which is a big difference from older vaccines, where the virus that is delivered can be used only once (Sputnik-V vaccine uses 2 different delivery platforms _because of_ this.

The other thing to look at is efficiency: as the vaccines can deliver mRNAs that cells express anyways in healthy people, the lesser toxicity can mean a higher likelihood of success for the drug (which is the main problem with drug development in the last 10-20 years).