--- title: New mRNA Flu Shots Are Coming description: Moderna and Pfizer are testing mRNA flu shots that target the strains most likely to circulate during the 2022 flu season. canonical: https://time.com/6213110/mrna-flu-shot-2022/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-09-14T15:07:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:35.183Z article:section: Health og:title: Flu Season Is Coming. mRNA Flu Shots Aren't Far Behind og:description: Moderna and Pfizer are testing mRNA flu shots that target the strains most likely to circulate during the 2022 flu season og:url: https://time.com/6213110/mrna-flu-shot-2022/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1e930998fc801735/698a356516d8849d33c3b058/GettyImages-83290870-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2010 og:image:height: 1131 og:image:alt: Person receiving a vaccine og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Flu Season Is Coming. mRNA Flu Shots Aren't Far Behind twitter:description: Moderna and Pfizer are testing mRNA flu shots that target the strains most likely to circulate during the 2022 flu season twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1e930998fc801735/698a356516d8849d33c3b058/GettyImages-83290870-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Flu Season Is Coming. mRNA Flu Shots Aren't Far Behind > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=a18da17c-d57a-4076-be90-5d53950285d1&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine [Watch (HLS stream): The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/BTNvQC2o.m3u8) (5:16)  _Published 2021-12-13. For those of us lucky enough to live in wealthy countries with access to these top-shelf vaccines, it has made all the difference. The miracle workers behind the COVID-19 vaccines are the TIME Heroes of the Year not only because they gave the world a defense against a pathogen, but also because the manner of that astonishing achievement guards more than our health: they channeled their ambitions to the common good, talked to one another and trusted in facts._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Sep 14, 2022 3:07 PM UTC  Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Sep 14, 2022 3:07 PM UTC After the remarkable [success of the mRNA vaccines](https://time.com/6211921/covid-19-booster-efficacy/) in protecting people against COVID-19, scientists are turning their attention next to another annual respiratory scourge: influenza. Both [Moderna](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-takes-key-action-approving-second-covid-19-vaccine) and Pfizer—makers of the first vaccines to earn U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval using the mRNA technology—are studying whether subbing in the influenza virus’ genetic material in that platform will prove equally fruitful. On Sept. 14, Pfizer [announced](https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-initiates-phase-3-study-mrna-based-influenza-vaccine) that the first volunteers had received doses of its mRNA flu shot; the Phase 3 study will involve more than 25,000 adults in the U.S. ages 18 and up who will be randomly assigned to receive either the experimental vaccine or a placebo. In June, Moderna [announced](https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moderna-Announces-First-Participants-Dosed-in-Phase-3-Study-of-Seasonal-Influenza-Vaccine-Candidate-mRNA-1010/default.aspx) its late-stage trial of an mRNA-based influenza vaccine that targets the same flu strains that are expected to circulate this fall and winter. Moderna’s study will involve 6,000 adults in the U.S. and other countries in the southern hemisphere, which experiences its flu season several months before the U.S. Both trials are now at similar stages; neither company has provided a timeline for when they might expect results, and, if those results are positive, when they might submit a request to the FDA for approval. Public health experts are hoping it won’t be long, however. The advantage of the mRNA platform is that it’s flexible and generalizable. Theoretically, scientists only need to switch out the genetic material, or mRNA sequences, from one virus for another. It’s a matter of figuring out which specific genes will activate the immune system the best—and that’s where researchers have decades of experience with influenza that they didn’t have with SARS-CoV-2. **Read More**: [_mRNA Technology Gave Us the First COVID-19 Vaccines. It Could Also Upend the Drug Industry_](https://time.com/5927342/mrna-covid-vaccine/) Both companies are targeting the four flu strains that the World Health Organization (WHO) identified [in February](https://www.who.int/news/item/25-02-2022-recommendations-announced-for-influenza-vaccine-composition-for-the-2022-2023-northern-hemisphere-influenza-season) as being most likely to circulate during the 2022-2023 flu season in the northern hemisphere. The early studies from both Pfizer and Moderna showed the mRNA flu vaccine was safe, which led to the ongoing late-stage studies that will focus more specifically on demonstrating whether the shots are effective at protecting people from influenza. Current vaccines, which use decades-old technology that involves growing the influenza virus in chicken eggs, have traditionally been moderately effective. When WHO experts accurately predict and match the vaccine strains to the flu strains that end up circulating, the shots protect people from serious illness [40%-60% of the time](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm). In years when the match isn’t as tight, the shot’s effectiveness goes down to about 20%-30%. mRNA vaccines should eliminate this mismatch. Because the technology is more flexible, manufacturers can create shots with new genetic sequences in about three months or so. That means that if a bad mismatch occurs during a flu season, scientists could potentially produce a new batch of mRNA flu vaccines targeting the right genetic sequences during the same season**.** That, in turn, could reduce the hospitalizations and deaths caused by influenza, which still remain relatively high. The virus causes up to 700,000 hospitalizations and 52,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. While an mRNA flu shot would be a huge advance in vaccine technology, there may be other ways to protect people from respiratory illness with combination shots. In a separate trial, Moderna is also investigating combination vaccines that would immunize people against both SARS-CoV-2 and influenza in a single shot. ## Transcript [00:00] I think vaccines are misunderstood, and maybe it's because it seems like magic. [00:07] That simplicity and the mystery of it is something that ends up creating a lot of skepticism. [00:14] People are fooled by the speed. [00:17] Everything that we knew when it was time to design a vaccine for COVID-19, [00:22] we knew for so long, but the public had just become aware of it. [00:26] If this would happen two years ago, we would not be ready. [00:29] Saying that it happened overnight, it took two, three decades, at least. [00:34] 2021 was the year when so many praised the miracle of vaccine development. [00:40] In science, there is hardly ever a simple, quick fix. [00:44] But this was truly a moment of the right fix - [00:47] a brand new kind of vaccine technology - [00:50] at exactly the right time. [00:53] I started out in math, and I moved to biology. [00:56] And after medical school, I saw one of the first cases of HIV in Tennessee back in 1982. [01:03] And so the first part of my career was trying to understand [01:06] the immunology of vaccine-enhanced disease and trying to make vaccines safer. [01:12] I got interested in science when I was 16 years old. [01:16] I was hooked on the idea that you could go to work [01:20] and discover something that no one else in the world knows on any given day. [01:25] It seems at 16, I thought that maybe I will be a scientist. [01:30] I was always working with mRNA, I mean for 30 years at least. [01:35] And I never wanted to develop a vaccine. I wanted to develop it for therapy. [01:40] When I first came to Penn from the NIH, [01:44] pure luck hit where I met Kati Karikó over a Xerox machine. [01:49] And she told me she worked on RNA, and she could help us with our vaccine. [01:57] Every experiment doesn't work, every hypothesis isn't good. [02:01] It was a continuous flow of negative feedback. [02:05] But we saw the potential of the RNA and neither of us would give up. [02:11] Although mRNA can teach our cells to fight infection, it took doctors Karikó and Weissman [02:17] 16 years to figure out how to use it safely in a vaccine. [02:22] First when I made this RNA, actually I did not tell Drew Weissman, my colleague, [02:27] because I thought that maybe I mixed up something. [02:29] So I repeated the experiment and we could see that there was no inflammation in human cells. [02:35] We're both scientists. We're not baseball players who cheer when we hit a homerun. [02:41] We knew that it had great potential. [02:43] But what we thought about is what are we going to do with it? [02:47] Meanwhile, doctors Corbett and Graham spent years unlocking the structural secrets of viruses. [02:54] One of the really important problems in coronaviruses that had not been solved is really simple. [03:01] What does the coronavirus really look like to the immune system? [03:06] And to figure that out, you have to be able to take a really high definition picture [03:13] of the proteins that are on the surface of the coronavirus. [03:16] And then do some protein engineering to stabilize the structure. [03:21] At that moment, you realize that you have almost what is a universal strategy for creating a vaccine for coronaviruses. [03:32] A mysterious respiratory illness with similarities to SARS has healthcare workers around the world on alert. [03:40] What we said to each other, all's we need is a sequence and we're ready to go. [03:44] We can make a vaccine in weeks and get it into people very quickly. [03:52] The fact that we made a vaccine in 10 months, [03:56] and has the potential to end this pandemic, will certainly stand out. [04:01] "Do it mama!" (laughter) [04:04] Most scientists never get to see a product actually used. [04:09] And to watch the evening news and see the relief on healthcare providers getting immunized, [04:14] those were special moments. [04:16] I also get emotional when I got a letter from an elderly home, [04:22] and they reported that they received the vaccine. [04:26] There were like 200 elderly in that home. [04:30] And nobody died. [04:34] On social media, when children were going back to visiting their grandparents again. [04:40] Seeing people reunited in that way, it was a very surreal moment. [04:48] A surreal moment, and definitely worth celebrating, if only briefly before a return to work. [04:55] These scientists are now trying to apply their game-changing discoveries to other diseases. [05:01] Influenza, even cancer. 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