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Going live: How microRNAs might bring living vaccines back into the fold

Nature Medicine volume 24, pages 248–250 (2018)Cite this article

Live-attenuated vaccines go back to the nineteenth century, when Louis Pasteur accidentally discovered that chickens injected with old, and therefore weakened, batches of live cholera-causing bacteria resisted infection after being injected with fresh, live bacteria. Today, nearly a dozen viral and bacterial diseases, including tuberculosis and yellow fever, have live-attenuated vaccines for prevention. These vaccines mimic real infection and are considered more effective than vaccines that contain dead microorganisms or particles of these organisms. “Vaccines work best when you simulate an infection,” says Raul Andino, a microbiologist and immunologist at the University of California, San Francisco. “And attenuated vaccines are the best ones—this has been proven over and over again.” But, as was evident with polio, live-attenuated vaccines can be risky. Moreover, inactivated virus vaccines can be manufactured more easily. Because the virus within these vaccines is dead, scientists needn't perform extensive quality-control tests to show safety, the way they would for live-attenuated vaccines.

In New York City's Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, microbiologist Benjamin tenOever thinks he has a new vaccine design that will capitalize on the benefits of a live-attenuated vaccine without any of the side effects. The basic principle is the same: the vaccine will contain a weakened, live virus to tip off the body's immune system to the presence of a foreign invader. Where tenOever's idea differs from current approaches is that he plans to use tiny molecules of RNA known as microRNAs to help stop the virus in its tracks before it can mount any sort of infectious attack.

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  1. Shraddha Chakradhar is Nature Medicine's associate news editor in Boston.

    • Shraddha Chakradhar
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Chakradhar, S. Going live: How microRNAs might bring living vaccines back into the fold. Nat Med 24, 248–250 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0318-248

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