People tried to compare the COVID vaccine development time to previous vaccines without understanding the difference in how the mRNA vaccines are made. You essentially just need to sequence the virus's genome (which is miraculously easy to do these days because of other amazing people's incredible efforts), then target a protein from the virus's exterior and use that snippet in the mRNA vaccine. This radically reduces the time it takes to develop a vaccine as well as increase it's effectiveness because of the control you have over the vaccine's selected target.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does CRISPR help the development of the vaccines in any way?

[–] charliespider 4 points 1 year ago

My understanding is that that's what's used to extract the targeted protein marker from the virus genome, so not only does it help, it's a key component in developing an mRNA vaccine.