Viewed differently, however, failure is a step towards normalcy and should not provoke broader pessimism about mRNA or the increasingly common virus variants that CureVac blames for its poor results. Vaccines and drugs often fail, even when developed over long periods of time and tested against lighter targets than a mutating pandemic virus. The failure rate is particularly high with new technologies, and drugs based on messenger RNA are quite suitable. While the company tested its vaccine in a more difficult environment than its mRNA competitors, other shots variants seem to withstand better, and CureVac took a different approach, which likely contributed to its poor results. Messenger RNA technology still offers enormous potential.
