# Vaccines From [[A Theory of Progress: Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants]] * 1796 - Edward Jenner found that cowpox protected against smallpox. The learning is that there are animal viruses can prevent similar human diseases, though there wasn’t any sense of what viruses were at that point. * 1868 - Friedrich Miescher discovered nucleic acids and RNA, since it was discovered in the nucleus * 1885 - Louis Pasteur found that inoculations work. His thesis was that inactivated viruses could still train the immune system. This led to the influenza vaccine and the polio vaccine * 1892 - viruses were discovered by Martinus Beijerinck by looking at filters from a diseased tobacco plant that infected other tobacco plants * 1937 - Max Theiler attenuated yellow fever virus, introducing a series of genetic alterations, that helped humans carry it and induce immunity. The same technique then worked on polio, measles, mumps and several more. * 1947 - Hypothesis on how RNA fits into gene function * 1961 - mRNA was suggested by Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob, thinking in informational terms, and later discovered at Caltech * 1980 - recombinant DNA technology helps create vaccines containing purified surface proteins from specific viruses, used in Hep B, papillomavirus and influenza. * 2021 - SARS CoV-2 vaccine through mRNA, where the vaccines use mRNA, DNA or viral vectors that provide the instructions to cells on how to make the proteins. To get to the mRNA vaccines, we also needed insights into scaling up good manufacturing practices and instability of in vivo delivery. ### Related * [[mRNA Vaccines]] [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Vaccines) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Vaccines)