Many people first learned about mRNA vaccines during the coronavirus pandemic, when the companies Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna released their COVID-19 vaccines. The Pfizer-BioNTech shot was the first COVID-19 vaccine to earn emergency authorization in the United States, and later, it would become the first mRNA vaccine of any kind to be fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
But even though these firsts took place during the pandemic, mRNA vaccines had been in development for many years before COVID-19 emerged as a threat.
