From the Foreword
by Thomas R. Cech, Distinguished Professor, University of Colorado Boulder
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1989

Delaye's account of messenger RNA medicines is remarkable in several ways. As a non-scientist, Delaye has worked diligently to understand the concepts of molecules and cells, of DNA, RNA and protein, of lipids and nanoparticles. Because he remembers how he struggled to understand these concepts, he tailors his descriptions to help his non-scientist readers overcome the hurdles.

Furthermore, Delaye is unabashedly enthusiastic about mRNA. Even as he relates all the years that mRNA went unappreciated and was disparaged as a potential pharmaceutical, Delaye is in the stands of the stadium rooting for team RNA. As an RNA scientist, I find this enthusiasm for RNA to be obvious; and when I attend an RNA conference, the feeling is unanimous. Yet it's exciting to see a non-scientist so enthusiastic about the bashful daughter of DNA.

Finally, Delaye tells stories about the scientists making the discoveries as much as the research itself. An unruly lot these mRNA scientists are! If the reader has been envisioning scientists as calm, studious eggheads moving about calmly in white lab coats, that view will be debunked in every chapter. Delaye relates how scientists deal with the disappointment and setbacks that inevitably accompany research at the frontiers of knowledge. He describes how competition between laboratories simultaneously speeds progress and enrages some of the competitors. And how, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrives and the health of the world is at stake, the intense competition is tempered by some timely cooperation.

About the Author:
Fabrice Delaye is a science and technology journalist based in Switzerland with contributions at multiple publications including US correspondent of daily swiss newspaper L'Agefi, science and technology editor at business magazine Bilan, and now as reporter-at-large for science media Heidi.news in Geneva. He is a graduate of the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris and has a master's degree from the Swiss institute of technology in Lausanne, EPFL and the author of four published books.

His curiosity and ever-expanding expertise of life sciences, medical technologies, digital and renewable energies and all other areas science based and driving tech start-up investments has led him to become a highly in-demand speaker for both business and academic sectors at conferences around the world, as well as being appointed special advisor for the prestigious ArtTech platform in Switzreland. While at Bilan, he launched the notoriously prescient "50 Start-Ups," which has been fostering breakout science and tech talent for the past decade.

When Covid-19 wrapped its relentless grip on the global population and vaccines arrived to the rescue in seemingly record time, Delaye knew the story of the messenger RNA vaccines that promised to save society could not be as easy or short as people wanted to believe, but when he went in pursuit of the origins of mRNA technologies he realized it was an untold story... until now.

Maximizing on decades of contacts and his unique grasp of the science and stakes involved, Delaye set out to document the long, harrowing and triumphant road that has brought to light the unlikely messenger RNA technology that just might transform the world, far behind the pandemic.