As we round up 2021, mRNA vaccines have been the remarkable success story of 2021, but we’ve only scratched at the surface of their potential. Plus, the advances in food science and cellular agriculture that could make animal-free milk as common place as traditionally farmed milk.

Hosts: Matt Armitage & Richard Bradbury 

Produced: Richard Bradbury for BFM89.9

Episode Sources

Read:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133562-500-how-mrna-is-transforming-the-way-we-treat-illnesses-from-flu-to-cancer/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133562-800-the-mrna-technology-behind-covid-19-vaccines-can-transform-medicine/

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/17/cows-milk-without-cows-start-up-13m-seed-funding-imagindairy

Listen:

The music that made this episode - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5o85xTNsPrQ2PWH8n2RanP?si=211f46a9cef846e9

Follow us:

www.kulturpop.com

https://www.instagram.com/kulturpop/ 

https://twitter.com/kulturmatt

Flying off somewhere, purchase your COVID-19 tests from BB healthcare.

Before traveling as the vaccinated travel lane requires testing at pre departure

and arrival for Malaysia and Singapore, you may now repurchase your COVID 19

tests to ensure a seamless journey.

Our high-tech onsite labs at KLIA one and two make for a shorter wait

while you relax in our exclusive health screening lounge for.

Visit airport dot Dr.

To you dot mind, brought to you by BP healthcare.

This is a download from BFM 89.9.

The business station

BFM 89.9.

The business station.

My name is rich Bradbury.

To Matt explained now in our first of three episodes wrapping up the

year in doors that has been 2021.

We're talking about the trends and breakthroughs in science and

technology that have marked this year.

Um, Matt.

Hi.

Um, I think we've got to start with vaccines today.

Hey rich.

Yeah.

Cause I've been promising it for up for weeks and weeks and failing to deliver.

So, you know, I I've got to, uh, well deliver like the vaccines.

Yeah, exactly.

Um, you know, just, just a couple of weeks ago though, this was going to be

a celebration of the vaccines that have, you know, let us eat out in restaurants.

Head to the beach or go back to the cinema again.

Uh, you know, people have been able to even get back on planes again

with reasonable confidence, you know, especially given the impact that the,

uh, Delta variant had worldwide, uh, pushing countries back into lockdown,

even as their vaccination programs were rolled out, you know, at least with, uh,

Malaysia, uh, You know, we're fortunate enough to be in a position where the

country can offer people booster shots now, um, you know, cause Malaysia may

not have been the first in line to receive the vaccine stocks and, uh, it's

a vaccination rollout may have, uh, uh, you know, had, uh, an initially hesitant

public response, but it has been a massive success overall, but you know,

I don't want to get into the politics.

Any of it.

I opted for the AstraZeneca vaccine.

I got both doses at PW TC, and I was hugely impressed with

the scale, the organization and the efficiency of that process.

Then, you know, as I said, As we're about to celebrate those successes.

Uh, we have news about the emergence and the potential threat

of the almond chronic variant.

And it's going to be another couple of weeks before we really have a

kind of accurate threat assessment.

Does it respond to the current vaccines or will those vaccines

have to be tweaked before we find out how infectious it really is and

how rapidly it's likely to spread.

So that's a bit of a dark cloud hanging over what was supposed to be a kind of

celebration of a remarkable success story.

Yep.

I also got mine done at P WTC as well.

Uh, amazingly impressed.

I, I particularly loved the bus cause over there.

Um, but yeah, move, moving on.

Uh, vacs.

That was the Oxford English dictionary word of the year,

right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, uh, Miriam Webster, the U S dictionary publishers said vaccine was

the most searched for word on that.

It's, you know, both with people trying to understand what vaccines

are and how they work, as well as people trying to get to grips with,

uh, the health policy responses.

So we've all added phrases like MRI and a PCR double dose to our vocabularies over

the past kind of 18 months, we routinely wash everything we buy from grocery

stores, even when they come in boxes and we're buying, you know, at home saliva.

Kate's we've transformed them kitchen tables into offices and into

classrooms often at the same time.

So it really has been, you know, a year of, of kind of quiet

triumphs as well as devastation.

Yeah.

Yeah, for

sure.

Now let's, let's rewind a little bit, uh, and, and talk about, uh, your point

about E how well the people really understand the science behind those terms.

Well, that's one of the reasons that I wanted to bring it up today.

You know, there are a few different types of vaccine, uh, MRN a is just one.

So there are the viral vector vaccines that AstraZeneca Johnson and Johnson.

And of course the Russian Sputnik virus that use a safe, modified form, uh,

version of the virus to deliver the.

Pathogen that kills the cells, uh, the whole vaccine viruses like Sinovac

and sign a farm that use an inactive or deactivated version of the virus

that triggers your body's own immune response to, uh, the invading virus,

a protein subunit vaccines, like Novavax, which has recently received

emergency approval in some countries.

Break up the pathogen of the virus into sub units and a thought to be safer for

people with compromised immune systems because they minimize the side effects.

Right.

But the type I think that's received most of the press, the MRNs or

messenger RNA vaccines of which.

Pfizer and Madonna are examples.

Uh, there are also antiviral pills in the works by Merck and Pfizer,

neither of which has been cleared yet.

Um, Mark's pill causes the virus to essentially mutate itself to death.

While the Pfizer pill should block an enzyme that the virus

needs in order to replicate.

And specifically it's the MRN vaccine.

Do you want to talk about today?

Is that correct?

Yeah.

As I mentioned, you know, that's the one that's had the, uh, the, the most

press, and it's not a case of one system or type of drug being better

than another, you know, many of us are being advised to take different types of

vaccine vaccine for the booster shots.

Uh, for example, you know, if you had a vector vaccine initially, Then some

health authorities are recommending that you compliment that with an MRI and a

vaccine, but, uh, while we beat this virus back, I think we're going to see

a lot of these hybrid responses, uh, you know, along with treatments like REM

desert via a broad spectrum antiviral that can be used to treat those who develop

the disease, you know, and of course we're finding different medications.

Better with some strengths than others.

So it's that cliche, you know, the more tools in the toolkit, the better

we're equipped to fight the illness.

Uh, but I wanted to talk specifically about MRNs for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, to push back a little on claims that the vaccines are unsafe.

Because they would develop so quickly.

And secondly, because messenger RNA drugs hold the potential for treatments

for a wide range of conditions from flu to auto immune diseases to cancer,

which can be developed much faster and can be personalized, uh, a lot more.

Carefully and, and used in a much more targeted form ban traditional

vaccines that use modified versions of the invasive virus itself.

Yeah.

I think one of the big things though, Matt, is that whenever anybody kind of

announces that, you know, something is a game changer, uh, that it's going to

transform health or work or technology, there's often a good cause for skepticism.

Yeah.

I mean, whenever you hear hyperbolic claims, it does give

you pause, but let's be clear.

You know, this isn't a snake oil.

It's not a miracle cure.

It's a methodology for developing drugs.

So you, aren't going to see bottles of in the vitamin aisle, in the pharmacy

as a kind of panacea or a cure-all.

What reset actually talking about is a new way of delivering

these drugs into our bodies.

How's we're essentially a technology show.

You know, if you think of us, if you think of our bodies as an operating system and

vaccines are like a hack or a cheat code, they're sending information to yourselves

that activate them to fight the virus.

Now I know that might sound scary to some people, but MRI is

essentially doing what viruses do.

Viruses are hackers.

They hack our bodies and tell them to produce proteins and enzymes.

That benefit the disease.

Of course, to our disadvantage.

So, you

know, in context of our show, we're talking about, we're looking

at white hackers versus black.

Sorry, we're looking at wires.

I'll do that again.

So we're looking at white hat, hackers versus black hat.

Yeah.

Where the MRMA is?

Uh, a white hat.

Of course.

So, yeah, sort of in a sense, you know, I've been called

out recently by listener for.

Over-simplifying science and misrepresenting.

So I have to tread careful with my analogies.

Uh, so it's important to distinguish between the two parts of the process, the

hack, the process of getting the drug into the body and the code, the message that.

Hack delivers.

Uh, for example, uh, the Madonna, uh, I think had a working trial of,

uh, an MRI and a vape based COVID vaccine within 66 days last decade, I

think back in 2013 in a response to.

Bird flu outbreak in China, Novartis was able to create a potential MRI

and a vaccine in only eight days.

Now I know these sound like astonishing times and that does make people

wonder about how safe they can be, especially when you compare them

to traditional vaccines that use live or deactivated viruses, which

can take a year or more to develop.

So that's where we come back to that delivery system, the MRMA, and

this isn't an overnight sensation.

This is a technology and methodology that scientists have been painstakingly

trying to perfect since the 1990s, uh, for chewing tersely.

I think we've seen these techniques, uh, well, perfected is the wrong

word in the circumstances, but you know, we've been lucky.

The hack, the delivery system was ready in time to help us.

The Corona virus.

So

you think we should be looking more at those 30 years of research rather than

66 days of sequencing when we evaluate MRN vaccines, Pfizer BioEnTech and Medina.

Yeah, because you know, this truly is not an overnight development.

As I said, research into MRI and DNA vaccines has been ongoing since the

1990s, uh, DNA and RNA vaccines in theory.

Allow you to treat a virus in a more straightforward manner because instead

of manufacturing proteins to fight the virus, which are then injected into the

body, an MRI and a vaccine carries a code that tells the body to produce those

viral proteins and stimulate the immune response itself and DNA and RNA are much

easier to manufacture than those proteins.

A to quote Peter Collins.

Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the university

of British Columbia from a piece of new scientist with MRNs vaccines.

You're not relying on any biological processes during the manufacture.

So it is a much more straightforward process.

Yes.

Um, I'm sure there might be some people wondering, you know, why, um,

if the process is straightforward, that it's taken 30 years to develop this.

Because it's that same thing that we often come back against the, the reality

of replicating, what you can do in a lab with what you can do with human bodies.

So many viruses use RNA to attack ourselves.

So our bodies are programmed to fight them.

They're programmed to fight.

Invasive RNA.

So it was found that RNA is introduced into the body, produced a much

more extreme immune response than vaccines using deactivated viruses.

So the RMA would be destroyed before it could actually reach the cells

and deliver its message to tell the body to produce the proteins that

would target the invading virus.

And marinade came to be viewed as a bit of a dead end and focus

shifted to created the creating around the DNA based vaccines.

And we haven't seen the fruits of any of those DNA vaccines yet.

However, uh, in 2005, um, again, this is from new scientist, uh, scientists

at the university of Pennsylvania managed to modify the MRI RNA in

such a way that it could bypass the body's auto immune response and avoid.

Triggering those massive reactions that would destroy the vaccine

before it reached the cells.

That's

a bit like

a backup.

Sure.

You know, we might as well get the most out of the hacking analogies,

but you know, that that works as well.

You know, there are other defenses to prevent RNA invading our body.

There are mechanisms in our sweat, tears, and blood called RNs that destroyed them.

Uh, another group of researchers managed to find a way to

package the RNs in tiny balls.

Lipid nanoparticles.

So they were basically wrapped in an oily layer that would propel the RNA

as-is and prevent them from being destroyed in the blood, getting them to

the cells where they can deliver that.

Um,

I mean, come on, it does sound a bit like programming.

Well, which is why, you know, I said, we have to be careful with the

analogies because of the conspiracy surrounding mind control and microchips.

You know, what we have had with the MRMA approach was a sudden need and the

corresponding investment to push forward.

Those MRI made vaccines.

And of course, Take that 30 years of research that they're built on

and take them into the mainstream.

And it explains the speed with which we were able to develop the vaccines because

we suddenly had that delivery mechanism.

So once the virus has been sequenced, you now have the

building block to create ways to.

Uh, block the replication of the virus in the body, and rather than

creating candidates that require those biological processes in a

lab, you create candidates has code.

And when you have the candidates, you believe would work against the virus,

you can start testing because you already have that system to deliver

the coded message to the body cells.

So not only are you speeding that development process, but you're

making it a lot cheaper too.

So that has a lot of implications.

All kinds of diseases beyond, uh, the current kind of COVID epidemic.

And it brings up that potential for, as I've mentioned earlier, customized

and personalized treatments at the individual or the group level.

Okay.

Um, what become by then unlocking the potential of those vaccines

and a quick look at breakthrough.

In future foods, uh, you tuned into mansplained here on BFM 89.9.

The business station

Bluff free, medium BFM, 89.9.

BFM 89.9, the business station.

My name is rich Bradbury.

This is Matt splint.

Uh, Matt.

So, um, we've been talking about MRNs vaccines today.

Uh, and we mentioned the idea, sorry, the idea of programming so we can address.

Um, so, so can we address some of the.

Issues of a skepticism, please.

Yeah.

I mean, I think we have to, I mean, when you, when you see the array of different

kinds of vaccines and methods that we use to make them, as I said earlier, you

know, viral vectors, subunits, MRNs, and more in theory, there should be a vaccine

that overcomes whatever objections that you have about a particular vaccine.

You know, one of the strongest objections that we've heard people say

has been about putting chemicals in your body, uh, injecting the vaccine.

So you would have thought that MRI now vaccines would appeal

to people with those fears.

Because here you have a treatment that simply tells your body how

to fight off the virus itself.

And that uses the same methods that the viruses themselves.

Used to attack us to build your own defenses, uh, you know, by telling your

body how to produce its own proteins, uh, and telling the cells how to combat

those, uh, invade invasive proteins.

Uh, so as we've seen, you know, a lot of the prejudices against

this vaccine are themselves largely immune to truth and facts.

But maybe one of the ways is to show her many other uses and applications.

MRNs vaccines can have to demonstrate that one they're safe.

Uh, but also they're very useful for a wide range of conditions.

And also, you know, that they can extend affordable treatments for people

who face that horrifying choice of pushing themselves and their families

into bankruptcy in order to pay for expensive life-saving treatment.

So could we then use a MRN to potentially replicate other therapies?

Uh, yeah, I mean, you know, and look for those kind of cheap alternatives

for, for those, those costly drugs.

Um, we can use it to create, for example, a range of antibody treatments,

uh, antibody treatments are already available for many conditions, but

they're difficult to manufacture, which makes them expensive.

And treatment often requires frequent or periodic injections of those antibodies.

You know, maintain the, um, the efficacy.

So the new scientist uses the example of a rare kidney condition called, uh,

a H U S and the, a antibody treatment for it, a drug called I'm not going

to get the pronunciation of this.

Right.

But it's a occula zumab I think, which costs hundreds of

thousands of dollars a year.

So it's only available to you if you have a health system that.

Willing to pay or you have very good medical insurance, or you have a lot of

personal money, a better solution would be an MRI and a based replacement that tells

the body how to fight the disease itself.

Uh, you know, with a traditional vaccine because you're creating living cells each.

Different vaccine essentially requires an entirely new production process.

That's why traditionally we haven't been able to produce multiple vaccines

on the same line in the same way that you can with manufacturer, you know,

the same way you can put different flavors of crisps on the same line.

So with MRNs treatments, that production process is always the same.

It's the message that the vaccine carries that changes not the delivery.

So.

Um, we addressed that issue of over-hyping at the

start of the show, right?

When we talk about and a, how broad are we looking in terms of diseases?

Well, I guess to understand that we need to understand better

how an MRI and a vaccine or treatment functions inside the body.

So with the COVID treatments, uh, obviously that's a vaccine.

So small quantities of MRNs are used because large quantities will stimulate.

Overly strong immune response.

So it's injected into muscle tissue typically in the shoulders so that it

doesn't spread B uh, to a very large area.

Uh, other treatments such as antibody treatments, they require larger amounts

of the carrier because they have to tell a broader range of cells, how to

fight whatever is going on in the body.

So they're injected into the bloodstream.

They then traveled to the liver.

And the liver uses the coded MRNs to create the relevant proteins.

Uh, I'm going to quote from the new scientist here, but it turns the

liver into a bioreactor for producing almost any protein based drug.

So going back to your question, that makes its potential enormous.

And of course, This is still an emerging part of the MRI and a story

because it was only in 2017 that our team at the university of Pennsylvania

discovered that this was possible.

Uh, so another example that a new scientists use.

At the trials that Madonna started this year for a drug that targets

auto immune conditions by coding the signaling proteins in the body.

Uh, and they've got another drug in, uh, in preparation as well that treats

inherited diseases by replacing the faulty enzyme that causes them to be triggered.

So what do you think, um, Some of the hurdles that still need to be cleared.

Well, we have that delivery system that hacks.

So there are still issues with the way that these drugs will be targeted.

As I said, you know, it's only recently that scientists discovered the

potential for auto immune conditions.

So.

Problem, largely rests that it's difficult to deliver the MRNs

anywhere other than the liver.

So we have to find ways to deliver them to other organs or into brain tissue.

For example, in concentrations that may be larger than it's possible to inject

because again, of the number of cells that they need to deliver the message to one

way that's being used or being trialed.

Is to use the activated forms of viruses that are known to

target a specific group of cells.

So you coat the, uh, MRNs with this empty shell virus that will enable

it to reach that specific target.

However, uh, because it's a viral shell, the body then

creates an immune response to it.

So that produces its efficacy over time.

Uh, another way that they're looking at is to create this same empty shell,

but manufacture it from human proteins.

As I said, you know, all of these things are still at those initial stages.

We're not seeing anything anywhere near, uh, finished or market ready.

I suppose.

One of the big questions, you know, is what about the possibility of

using MRNs against cancer cells?

Well, there are a number of treatments in development,

but again, they're still quite a long way from human trials.

It is theoretically possible.

Biggest issue that I think that they're finding, or at least it's been reported

that they're finding is that tumor proteins are very similar to normal

proteins, uh, which is of course what allows cancer cells to avoid triggering

the body's own immune responses.

So we have to be sure that these MRNs vaccines for cancer.

Won't be themselves toxic and they only target the tumors and not ordinary tissue.

So if we go back to that earlier question about hyping, if we can

find ways to deliver the code to the cells that need it MRI and a could.

You know, totally transformative, uh, in cancers, it would enable personalized

treatments to be created very quickly.

And of course at a much lower cost.

And it also allows us to respond much more quickly to newly emerging

diseases and their variants.

You know, uh, we've seen that with the threats ranging from SARS tumors to Ebola.

The Corona virus over the past 20 years.

So how quickly we're able to respond can have enormous implications for mortality

rates, but also I'm limiting the spread and the impact of those diseases.

You know, no one wants to do.

I've been doing for the past couple of years, no one wants to live their

life under the threat of lockdowns or limitations to their social activities.

So M RNA may be one of the key tools in guaranteeing our health, our safety, and

our freedom of movement in the future.

I know you're wrapping this up because you want to get

a quick mention from one of the years, other big developments, um,

meat and dairy replacement for.

Well, this is tangentially related.

Um, you know, bio-reactors and DNA and protein.

So I thought it'd be good to include it with the vaccines today.

Uh, I could talk more about them, but you know, we've only got

three shows to round off the year.

So, uh, I, I've got to be brief, which as everyone knows is not my strongest suit.

Um, so we've seen, you know, This huge boom in plant-based and meat replacement

diets over the course of the pandemic here in Malaysia, we had the zero

chicken at KFC, which was actually really good, but became a kind of fast food,

stable, uh, staple rather in our house.

But we've also seen this massive move forward, not just in plant-based meat

replacements, like those in impossible burgers and their counterparts.

Yeah.

But the cost of cellular agriculture has made it difficult to produce

animal free meat, fish, and dairy on a commercial scale, a company

in Israel, a startup called imagine dairy, uh, thinks it's crack the

code for producing animal free dairy.

Commercially.

It hasn't come up with a good name, but, uh, you know, their milk would

be identical to cow's milk, but it would be made from fungi and plant

microorganisms, which would be programmed.

Produce milk where imaginary, uh, has the edge over its rivals in the space is

that they discovered a simpler process for isolating those milk proteins from

the microorganisms, which is going to allow them, or is allowing them

to scale production at a lower cost.

Um, we know the arguments for, for lab based cellular agriculture.

Um, cruelty-free lower emissions, less land used.

What, what realistic impact can we achieve by switching to this kind of.

Well imagine dairy estimate that their milk will consume around 10%

of the water and only 1% of the land use that traditional dairy consumes.

So in case you're imagining vast milk curation plants, that 1% also includes

the land and emissions that are used to feed those microorganisms, uh, livestock.

Estimated to create around 32% of a human generated methane pollution.

Uh, most of that comes from, uh, cows, whether it's from beef or dairy stocks.

So reducing those numbers, replacing them with cellular agriculture

could have a massive slowing effect on climate change, uh, especially

given the rubber tepid results of this year's cop 26 climate control.

Yeah, uh, with that said though, uh, are people ready to

accept this type of meat substitute?

Well, another reason for including it in today's Roundup.

This is something that people also have a lot of skepticism about not just vaccines.

Uh, I think that dairy is a good place for the industry to, uh, try and make

that crossover into the mainstream.

Uh, milk is less controversial than meat.

You know, people don't like that idea of, uh, tissue growing in

vats with milk, you know, it it's just a white liquid and a can.

What's the, uh, the big deal.

Once you can show people that sailor dairy, perhaps even butter cheese,

yogurt is identical to the animal sourced version and that it's safe.

Then I think that will help to lower their guard, to make them

more amenable to, uh, meat and fish that are produced in a similar way.

Uh, I want to do, uh, a larger show on this next year.

Uh, another future foods update because there are also.

Energy consumption issues with cellular agriculture and a lot of

the vegetable protein based meat substitutes are highly processed.

So there are a number of issues to look at in calculating you

know, what the best way to go is.

But I think it's safe to say, you know, during a Christmas season where supply

issues may be affecting the delivery of turkeys, that for the good of the

planet and the good of future societies.

Th that future has to contain less meat with the walking,

swimming and flying variety,

wonderful stuff.

Thanks very much.

Thanks, Richard.

Good to get the year done.

Indeed.

Folks, you can find Matt on Instagram and Twitter at culture.

Matt, you can also head over to culture, pop.com for transcripts of these

shows and information about culture pump and it's consulting services.

If you miss any part of the show, download the podcast wherever you

normally listen to it from we recommend the BFM app it's available in the

apple app store or Google play.

My name is rich, Brad Bree for.

Each 9.90 business station.

Thank you for listening to this podcast, to find more great

interviews, go to BFM dot mine or find us on iTunes, the FM 89.9.