Despite the seemingly sudden appearance of this cutting-edge mRNA technology it is, like many scientific innovations, actually the product of decades of piecemeal research. mRNA was first discovered around 60 years ago after scientists worked for years trying to understand how DNA co-ordinated protein production in cells.Inside all living cells are tiny protein-making factories called ribosomes. These factories make whatever proteins they are directed to produce, and those directions come from mRNA molecules.

For decades scientists suggested it was hypothetically possible to hijack this mechanism and deliver artificially designed mRNA to a cell, instructing it to generate whatever protein one wanted. But the idea was science fiction until several discoveries in the 1980s finally made it possible.