Question: How do you find a vaccine for a virus?

Angela Downie answered on 14 Jul 2020:

Hi guys, I see two of you asked this question! I am not a vaccine expert, but I will do my best to answer your question as best as I can:

There are a few different types of vaccines that can be used against a virus, so when researchers are trying to find a new vaccine they will likely use one of these.

-The first type are vaccines that use whole viruses that have been very weakened (this is also called attenuated) before injecting in the body. These viruses are too weak to cause an infection but will still create an immune response in the body. Very similar to this whole viruses that have been completely killed (or inactivated) can be used in the same way.

-A second type of vaccine does not use whole viruses at all, but what is injected are small parts of the virus, usually these are molecules that would be found on the surface of the virus, and that are enough to be recognized by the immune system.

Most of the vaccines in use today will be one of these two types.

-Recently some vaccines have been developed that don’t use any part of the virus but use something called mRNA, (some of the COVID-19 vaccines being developed are this type, so you might hear about them, but they are quite new). mRNA is a molecule normally produced as a copy of DNA and it basically works as instructions, so that our body can then read it and produce the bits that we need it to make to produce an immune response to the virus.

I hope this answers your question but let me know if you have any more doubts!