In an amazing feat of human ingenuity and teamwork, the first COVID-19 vaccine was designed, developed, tested, and authorized for emergency use in December 2020. Not only was this normally lengthy process completed in less than a year, it also introduced the novel use of modified mRNA to induce an immune response against an infection. These mRNA vaccines effectively generate antibodies and prevent infection and hospitalization. However, scientists did not know how mRNA vaccines compared to more common vaccine methods nor the mechanism by which COVID-19 vaccines induced long-term immunity.
To answer these questions, Shane Crotty and his group at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology performed a head-to-head comparison of four currently used COVID-19 vaccines that target the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein: Pfizer/BioNtech (mRNA), Moderna (mRNA), Janssen/J&J (adenovirus), and Novavax (recombinant protein). In a six-month longitudinal study published in Cell, the researchers examined blood samples from vaccinated and recently infected ...
