Manatt Managing Director Vin Gupta was featured on MSNBC in his role as an NBC Medical Analyst and pulmonologist clarifying the risks and benefits of mRNA vaccine technology.
Recent claims surrounding the decision to cut 22 mRNA vaccine development programs and additional federal funding for other mRNA technologies have included that mRNA vaccines don’t perform well in viruses that affect upper respiratory tract. Gupta said this was never the intention for mRNA vaccines.
“These mRNA vaccines, as we've been talking about for many years now, protect against severe complications in the lower respiratory tract, our lungs,” Gupta said. “In other words, it protects against severe pneumonia, something that might end up causing somebody to go to, say, the ICU and needing a ventilator or other life support.”
The funding cut from the mRNA programs are now said to be going toward broader strategies and whole-virus vaccines, which Gupta said has existed for decades and has been used to create the flu vaccine and the pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine, among others.
“mRNA vaccines work. They've saved millions of lives worldwide, and this fairly new technology can be a real game-changer in the way we protect ourselves against diseases moving forward,” Gupta said. “As a whole, our country will be less prepared and potentially in more danger thanks to these cuts to mRNA vaccine development.”
Watch the full clip here.