Story at a glance

• Researchers at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine have developed a new experimental mRNA vaccine for H5N1.

• H5N1, or bird flu, is circulating in birds and cattle and, in rare instances, can spread to people.

• “The mRNA technology allows us to be much more agile in developing vaccines; we can start creating a mRNA vaccine within hours of sequencing a new viral strain with pandemic potential,” Scott Hensley, a professor of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, said.

(NewsNation) — A new experimental mRNA vaccine developed by researchers at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine could help manage the outbreak of the H5N1 virus seen in birds and cattle, and also prevent human infections.

These new findings about the bird flu were published last week in Nature Communications.

“The mRNA technology allows us to be much more agile in developing vaccines; we can start creating a mRNA vaccine within hours of sequencing a new viral strain with pandemic potential,” Scott Hensley, a professor of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, said in a statement.

Hensley and his laboratory collaborated with Drew Weissman, a........

© The Hill