Moderna had a MERS vaccine and worked on SARS for years

And that helped in developing the COVID-19 vaccine so quickly. mRNA is the future of vaccine development and it is approaching Star TREK realm. With companies like Moderna and Repligen we are going to make some major advances in the near future

"Before there was ever a COVID-19 pandemic, our ten years of research and clinical trials taught us valuable lessons about designing both mRNA therapeutics and mRNA vaccines. This includes, in particular, how to manufacture and formulate mRNA that can produce the targeted proteins – the spike protein, in the case of coronaviruses like the SARS-CoV-2 virus – in the body. Clinical trials of our mRNA vaccine candidates against a variety of viruses have repeatedly demonstrated that they induce the desired immune response.

By the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had already been working for years on vaccines for infectious diseases, including on other coronaviruses and their spike proteins. As part of our mRNA technology platform, we had also already developed an mRNA delivery system that was specifically designed for vaccines.

Once the COVID-19 pandemic struck, we were well positioned to adapt our existing mRNA technology to try to address the global public health crisis. We worked closely with the NIH and other government and non-government partners to design and implement a robust COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial program that prioritized safety. Our speed in developing the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was ultimately a product of our many years of research and investment in mRNA vaccines."

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