Air turbulence: When can it become dangerous?
Flight turbulence like that encountered by a Singapore Airlines flight on Tuesday is extremely common, but there's one aspect of severe turbulence an aviation expert says can lead to serious injury.
Soon after a new coronavirus began spreading around the world, little-known vaccine developer Moderna began working with the U.S. National Institutes of Health to create a vaccine using a new technology.
That vaccine is now one of the pillars of the U.S. COVID-19 response, with 130 million doses administered just six months after regulators authorized it for use.
Moderna is now testing its vaccine in younger people as well as potential boosters that may be needed in the future - along with vaccines and treatments for other diseases - all using similar technology based on genetic code called messenger RNA.
The Associated Press spoke with company president Dr. Stephen Hoge, who oversees Moderna's research.
Q: WILL COVID-19 BOOSTER SHOTS BE NEEDED IN THE FUTURE?
A: I believe that there's going to be a chronic booster need. I definitely think they're prudent to plan for. None of us want to be in a situation next November where we have to go into another lockdown. We've been updating our vaccine to make sure it boosts you back up. That's the variant booster that we're going to have available in the fourth quarter.
Q: HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO DEVELOP NEW VACCINES TO FIGHT VARIANTS?
A: With the first version of the vaccine, we did it in about five months, but we had to do the large clinical trials. We won't have to do that now. For a booster targeting variants, we could do it in about three months.
Q: WHAT MAKES MESSENGER RNA SO USEFUL?
A: Messenger RNA is really just an instruction manual. It's no longer a medicine that somebody made. It's instructions to your body. We can put anything we want into that manual to tell it what to make, such as the spike protein on the COVID-19 virus. If you want to change a paragraph, you just cut and paste.
Q: WHAT ELSE CAN MRNA TREAT?
A: There's no disease where we shouldn't be able to eventually have a medicine.
Q: WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON?
(Vaccines for) viruses like influenza and cytomegaloviruses and other viruses that are hard to go after, like HIV. Half of our pipeline is in therapeutics. We have programs in cancer and heart disease.
Q: WHAT WILL MODERNA BE DOING 10 YEARS FROM NOW?
We'll be focused on cancer, infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases. In cancer, we have a couple programs in mid-stage studies. We are trying to prevent recurrence of melanoma. We're partnering with AstraZeneca to develop messenger RNA that could be injected into people undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting, to grow heart cells. If we can do that, that would be transformative.
Flight turbulence like that encountered by a Singapore Airlines flight on Tuesday is extremely common, but there's one aspect of severe turbulence an aviation expert says can lead to serious injury.
British Columbia serial killer Robert Pickton was attacked and sustained life-threatening injuries in a Quebec prison Sunday in what officials described as a 'major assault.'
New inflation data is 'welcome news' for consumers and an economist says it could signal the possibility for a interest rate cut as several core measures also continue to ease.
House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus is facing fresh Conservative-led calls to resign, this time over "very partisan" and 'inflammatory' language used – the Liberals say mistakenly – to promote an upcoming event.
Ontario Provincial Police continue to investigate a long weekend fatal boat collision on Bobs Lake, north of Kingston, Ont.
In his latest column for CTVNews.ca, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair argues that if there's an unofficial frontrunner in the eventual race to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader, it has to be former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.
The organizers of a month-long boycott of Loblaw-owned stores say they've decided to extend the boycott past May.
Donald Trump's reelection campaign called 'The Apprentice,' a film about the former U.S. president in the 1980s, 'pure fiction' and vowed legal action following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. But director Ali Abbasi is offering to privately screen the film for Trump.
The trial of a Winnipeg man who has admitted to killing four women has heard he searched the internet to look up the definition of what it means to be a serial killer.
Public libraries in Atlantic Canada are now lending a broader range of items.
Flashes of purple darting across the sky mixed with the serenading sound of songs will be noticed more with spring in full force in Manitoba.
Catching 'em all with impressive speed, a 7-year-old boy from Windsor, Ont. who only started his competitive Pokémon journey seven months ago has already levelled up to compete at a world championship level.
A sanctuary dedicated to animals with disabilities is celebrating the third birthday of one of its most popular residents.
2b Theatre recently moved into the old Video Difference building, seeking to transform it into an artistic hub, meeting space, and temporary housing unit for visiting performers in Halifax.
A B.C. woman says her service dog pulled her from a lake moments before she had a seizure, saving her life.
A Starbucks fan — whose name is Winter — is visiting Canada on a purposeful journey that began with a random idea at one of the coffee chain's stores in Texas.
Members of Piapot First Nation, students from the University of Winnipeg and various other professionals are learning new techniques that will hopefully be used for ground searches of potential unmarked grave sites in the future.
ALS patient Mathew Brown said he’s hopeful for future ALS patients after news this week of research at Western University of a potential cure for ALS.