So skimming through the link, it's a vaccine because it's still triggering a specific body response to fight the illness as opposed to directly attacking the illness itself? Is that a reasonable layman's summary of why it's called a vaccine?

(Old x'er here, Vaccines have been preventative for as long as I've ever known, that's the reason for the question.)

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The article says the immune system has a mechanism for teaching it not to attack every time there is a damaged cell via a process in the liver. They are saying they can take a protein, say myelin, and attach it to a sugar called pGal, and it will get ported to the liver where it will also get "trained" to not attack myelin. Then the immune system shouldn't attack nerve fibers as in MS.

So I guess it qualifies as a vaccine as it is involved in training the immune system though in this case to NOT attack something.

[–] NMBA@mstdn.ca 0 points 11 months ago

@be_excellent_to_each_other @m3t00
I an X that had the exact same thoughts lol. I’m no expert, but old vaccines often contained some of the virus live or deactivated, whereas mRNA are created and not of biological origin. So more about the front end than the back end.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 0 points 11 months ago

The amount of science research funded over COVID that allowed for the rapid development and testing of mRNA technology has created a boon for centuries to come. COVID may well be responsible for the death of autoimmune diseases.