Hyderabad’s Biological E to get mRNA technology from WHO to produce Covid vaccines

Posted By
10Pointer
Categories
Science & Technology
Published
5th Apr, 2022

Hyderabad-based vaccine manufacturer Biological E. Limited (BE) recently announced that it had been selected as a recipient of mRNA technology from the World Health Organisation (WHO) technology transfer hub.

Context

About mRNA vaccines

mRNA vaccines trick the body into producing some of the viral proteins itself.
They work by using mRNA, or messenger RNA, which is the molecule that essentially puts DNA instructions into action.
Inside a cell, mRNA is used as a template to build a protein.
mRNA vaccines use a messenger RNA created in a laboratory to teach the human cells how to produce a protein that in turn initiates an immune response inside the body against a particular disease.
The immune response will fight the actual virus as it gets into the body.
- At present, India has no Covid-19 vaccine made on mRNA platform.
This mRNA is delivered into the human body, whose cells read it as instructions to build that viral protein, and therefore create some of the virus’s molecules themselves.
These proteins are solitary, so they do not assemble to form a virus.
The immune system then detects these viral proteins and starts to produce a defensive response to them.

About World Health Organization (WHO)

World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations’ specialized agency for Health was founded in 1948.
Its headquarters are situated in Geneva, Switzerland.
There are 194 Member States, 150 country offices, six regional offices.
It is an intergovernmental organization and works in collaboration with its member states usually through the Ministries of Health.
The WHO provides leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.