A collaborator with L’Hebdo (Lausanne), then responsible for the technology section and for the “50 start-ups” initiative of Bilan after being a correspondent with L’Agefi in the United States in association with MIT’s Technology Review, today Fabrice Delaye is a reporter-at-large for Heidi.news. A graduate of the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris, he holds a post-graduate masters from EPFL [École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne] in Society, Science and Technology.
The development of very effective vaccines against the coronavirus in only ten months has raised Messenger RNA technologies to the rank of saviors of humanity. This apparent speed hides the realities of a technological development that has been going on for more than 30 years, itself drawing on even earlier fundamental research.

This account, based on more than 40 interviews with the researchers and entrepreneurs who have been involved, tells the 30-year history of how this scientific technology has led to the vaccination of hundreds of millions of people.

It is also the story of scientists and entrepreneurs who are often considered to be outsiders in the genetics community and by Big Pharma which has many times wasted the opportunity for such developments.

Often forced to publish their work in minor publications, to be refused subventions and find their patents wasted on many occasions, the outsiders of Messenger RNA today are getting their revenge.

Messenger RNA vaccines have opened the door to a medical revolution that goes well beyond epidemics. This revolution affects all therapies: from cardiac disease to cancer, from hereditary diseases to orphan or rare diseases.