The Pfizer / Biontech trial which yesterday showed 95% efficacy, and the Moderna vaccine which reported 94% efficacy, are developed using methods to create a synthetic molecule made in a lab. It is an mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccine, which is developed from the genetic code of the virus itself. Advances in biotechnology have allowed scientists to make it a stable mRNA molecule for a vaccine. This mRNA is delivered to the body’s cells, where our own cells turn it into a tiny portion of one of the virus’s proteins, our immune cells attack it, and allow the body to learn to defend against it – providing immunity.
mRNA vaccines, since they are synthetic, are quicker to develop – hence the rapid roll-out of vaccines that normally would take much longer.
[…]
Other promising vaccine candidates, including those from Oxford have been derived using fetal cells.
The cells used by most of the companies now trying to find a Covid-19 treatment, called the 293T line, were derived from the kidney tissue of a fetus aborted in the 1970s. A similar cell line, Per.C6, was obtained in 1985 from the retinal cells of an aborted 18-week-old fetus. These are the same, or similar to, the cells used in the development of other vaccines, such as the Rubella vaccine, as well as clinical treatments of various sorts.
In fact, the most effective drug treatments of the virus, Remdesivir and Regeneron, which helped President Donald Trump’s recovery from the Coronavirus, were also developed using fetal cells.