November 2023 MBR The Health/Medicine Shelf

The Health/Medicine Shelf

The Medical Revolution of Messenger RNA
Fabrice Delaye
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
www.cshlpress.com
9781621824947, $29.50, HC, 138pp

https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Revolution-Messenger-RNA/dp/1621824942

Synopsis: To the casual observer, it took just 10 months to develop a vaccine against the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. That extraordinary success was made possible by the use of messenger RNA (mRNA), the molecule that instructs cells to make a virus surface protein that stimulates the production of antiviral antibodies.

What most people don't know is that this apparently breakthrough technology had been in development for three frustrating decades. And that it was preceded by 30 earlier years of fundamental research.

With the publication of "The Medical Revolution of Messenger RNA", technology journalist Fabrice Delaye tells the story of how mRNA's medical potential was finally realized, setting the stage for a coming revolution in which our own bodies will generate therapeutic molecules we need. mRNA was long overlooked by mainstream molecular biologists. The pathway to recognition of its therapeutic possibilities was littered with broken careers, lawsuits, and opportunities missed by pharmaceutical companies. For the scientists who persisted through years of academic and commercial disappointment, the COVID-19 vaccine was an enormous vindication and an important step toward a new generation of therapies.

Fabrice Delaye interviewed more than 40 scientists and entrepreneurs worldwide to create this definitive account of the rise of a technology that promises to revolutionize medicine.

Critique: Informatively enhanced for the reader with the inclusion of a section of B/W photographs, a Foreword by Noble Prize Winner Thomas R. Cech, a two page Glossary, a four page Selected Bibliography, and an eight page Index, "The Medical Revolution of Messenger RNA" is an extraordinary and impressively well written, definitively detailed history of the development of COVID-19 vaccine. Exceptionally 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation. "The Medical Revolution of Messenger RNA" especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, college, and university library History of Medicine collections, and supplemental Immunology curriculum studies lists.

Editorial Note: Fabrice Delaye (http://www.liftglobal.org/people/fabrice-delaye) is a science and technology journalist based in Switzerland. He was U.S. correspondent at the daily Swiss newspaper L'Agefi, science and technology editor at magazine Bilan, and is now a reporter-at-large for Heidi.news in Geneva. He is a graduate of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and has a master's degree from the Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne, EPFL.

When COVID-19 imposed its relentless grip on the global population and messenger RNA-based vaccines came to the rescue in seemingly record time, Delaye realized that their development could not have been as simple and quick as people wanted to believe. But it was not until he went in pursuit of the origins of mRNA technologies that he uncovered a dramatic story that had never been told.

Maximizing his decades of contacts and his unique grasp of the science and the stakes involved, Delaye set out to document the long, harrowing, unlikely but ultimately triumphant road to discovery of RNA-based technology with the potential to transform the world far beyond the pandemic.

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