Thread by @AliNouriPhD

1/Great to be on @Mitch_Seattle to discuss the difference between the Pfizer, Moderna, and other vaccines💉and why we need high coverage in order to stop the chain of transmission🧵

https://twitter.com/Mitch_Seattle/status/1339665296706007040

2/The #Moderna vaccine, just like Pfizer/BioNTech, is a messenger RNA vaccine. #SARSCoV2 is covered w/Spike proteins that it grabs human cells with. The vaccine consists of small genetic material "messenger RNA" that instructs the human cell to make a part of the Spike protein

3/The mRNA is encased in a formulation of fatty material that helps it get inside our cells. There, it's "translated" into a piece of the Spike protein which activates our immune system to make antibodies & T cells so when we're exposed to the live virus, we can clear it.

4/mRNA vaccines do not contain the virus itself—just the Spike portion—& pose no risk of infection. Moderna and Pfizer's early results showed those w/ 2 injections had about 90% fewer cases of symptomatic #COVID19 than those who got the placebo.

5/The #AstraZeneca vaccine is a version of an adenovirus (common cold virus) that delivers instructions to our cells to make the Spike protein of the coronavirus. That way our immune system is "trained" so when it encounters #SARSCoV2, it can mount an efficient response

6/#SARSCoV2 is covered w/Spike proteins that help the virus grab human cells. To make the vaccine, researchers first isolated the gene that is responsible for making the Spike protein. They 'snipped' it from the rest of the genetic material of the coronavirus.

7/They then needed a delivery vehicle to get the Spike gene into our cells. So they took an adenovirus that normally infects chimpanzees, and genetically altered it so it can no longer replicate or cause disease. They then added the Spike gene to the adenovirus vector.

8/When the adenovirus and its Spike gene cargo get inside of our cells, our cellular machinery takes the Spike gene, which is in DNA format, and "transcribes" it into Spike RNA, which is then "translated" into Spike proteins.

9/The Spike protein is just a piece of the full coronavirus so it doesn't cause disease either. It just trains our immune system to quickly recognize that part of the virus. That way when we are infected with #SARSCoV2, we can mount an effective immune response against it.