Academician Zverev called the award of the Nobel Prize “for vaccines” politicized

According to the scientist, these drugs cannot be called effective

The developers of mRNA vaccines, popular in the West during COVID-19, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023. These are representatives of the University of Pennsylvania, USA Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman. The Russian scientists we interviewed expressed doubt about the significance of this discovery.

We all know that a vaccine is a harmless form of bacteria or virus that, when injected into the body, is supposed to naturally activate the immune system. When it is administered, the immune system attacks the viruses in the vaccine, as it would with real ones, resulting in antibodies against them appearing in the blood. As soon as the infection enters the body again, these antibodies will immediately rush into battle.

Until recently, the basis of vaccines was the pathogens themselves – killed or weakened viruses or their proteins. But to produce them on an industrial scale, huge production areas are needed. Modern virologists have taken a different path: they decided to save on the production of pathogens in the most ingenious way: by making reactors for them… the bodies of the patients themselves. This is how vector vaccines appeared. The pathogen genes are delivered to human cells through a “vehicle”, for example an adenovirus-based vector. The vector sequentially triggers in the cell the formation of messenger RNA of the vaccine protein, and then the protein itself appears. This method formed the basis of the Russian Sputnik-V, where, as a result of this complex procedure, the S-protein of the coronavirus appeared in the cells. He, in fact, was the vaccine itself.

By the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the type of vector vaccines had been known to scientists for more than 10 years. Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman proposed a method in which it was not necessary to use an adenovirus intermediary – it was enough to simply deliver ready-made messenger RNA (mRNA) to the cells as part of the finished vaccine. The merit of these scientists was that they were very quickly able to introduce a new, never used vaccine into clinical practice.

Of course, the mRNA vaccines Phazer and Moderna, created in the shortest possible time, saved many lives in the first wave of the pandemic, notes the head of the Department of Virology of Moscow State University. Lomonosova, professor, doctor of biological sciences Olga Karpova. However, she almost immediately discovered side effects, which were expressed in the form of the development of myocarditis. If in the first two years of vaccine use it was reported that myocarditis developed in 1-2 people per 100 thousand, now there are reports that the number of complications has increased significantly. They occur with great frequency, even among young people.

Just two years ago, there was talk that a similar mRNA vaccine should be developed in Russia. Now it is not obvious that this campaign can be the main panacea in the fight against Covid.

“It is noteworthy that now no one is trying to share the latest statistics on the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines,” says microbiologist, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vitaly Zverev. “They were effective against the first, Wuhan type of virus, but as soon as it began to change, the effectiveness of the vaccines fell. In fact, I am also confused by the fact that both vector and mRNA vaccines trigger only the synthesis of antibodies, but do not form cellular long-term memory of the disease.

Vitaly Zverev expressed his attitude to the selection of award winners:

— I am disappointed with the choice of the Nobel Committee. Creating a vaccine against coronavirus is not a Nobel level, not an epoch-making achievement. In my opinion, today’s selection of Nobel Prize laureates in physiology or medicine was unnecessarily politicized.

Help “MK”. The United States has become one of the leading countries where Pfaizer and Moderna RNA vaccines were developed and introduced into the clinical network earlier than anywhere else. As of January 6-8, 2021, about 2 million Americans have been vaccinated with just one of them, the Pfizer vaccine. For comparison: by that time only 350–400 thousand of our citizens had been vaccinated with the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29127 dated October 3, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Discovery not at Nobel level