357 | Jeff Coller on mRNA, Vaccines, and Bespoke Therapeutics
6/15/20261 hr 20 min
Messenger RNA (mRNA) plays a literally central role in the functioning of life as we know it, shuttling information back and forth between the DNA where it is stored to the ribosome where it is used to produce proteins. RNA may even have been the first molecule to kick-start the origin of life. Today, scientists are learning how to manipulate mRNA to cure and prevent diseases, whether through vaccination or literally editing one's DNA. Jeff Coller explains how it all works and how mRNA is revolutionizing medicine as we know it.
Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/06/15/357-jeff-coller-on-mrna-vaccines-and-bespoke-therapeutics/
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Jeff Coller received his Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is currently Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the RNA Innovation Center at Johns Hopkins University. He is co-founder of Tevard Biosciences and the Alliance for mRNA Medicines, and leads the REPAIRx consortium. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:01
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Sean Carroll· Host0:57
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. Many of you are old enough to remember the COVID-19 pandemic. Uh, slightly joking there. It wasn't that long ago, and of course, COVID-19 is still with us. It hasn't gone away. But things are very different now than they were in the year 2020. Uh, in 2020, there were a lot of lockdowns, a lot of prophylactic measures to try to make sure infection rates stayed low. It was a real global disruption in many