The end of the pandemic may be getting closer, but there's a concern about a shortage of

vaccines and a shortage of some of the ingredients in those vaccines in particular.

One essential ingredient is causing a big gap in the vaccine supply chain.

To talk about what this ingredient is and what scientists are planning to do about it

is recode your Becca Hyowile, Hey, Becca.

So what is the mystery ingredient that we could be running short on?

So right now, the two authorized vaccine candidates that we have are from Pfizer and

Moderna.

And as you may have heard, these are both mRNA vaccines.

So it's a relatively new way of delivering vaccines into the body.

But in order for these vaccines to work, the actual mRNA needs to make it into your cell

to instruct the cells to start initiating an immune response.

So basically they need protection and that's where these lipids or lipid nanoparticles

come in.

Lipids.

Lipids.

Yeah, a special version of that is needed to basically protect the mRNA vaccine from

and it goes from the syringe to your cells.

Okay.

This is getting very, very sciencey very quickly.

So just back me up here, what is a lipid and you're saying that these mRNA vaccines, which

are the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, these lipids are essential to producing them.

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