For several years, scientists at Wellington's Malaghan Institute have been researching a substance they hope could be a game-changer for medicine, called RNA.
"It's a really huge technological innovation in science," says the institute's director of strategic partnerships, Kjesten Wiig.
"It essentially acts as a messenger system, so it carries a code and that code tells the cell what proteins to make."
She's the interim co-director of a new Government-launched platform to boost RNA research in New Zealand.
While most vaccines contain a weakened bacteria or virus, which helps the body fight an infection, they take years to develop.
With RNA, they can be made much faster.
It was used by companies like Pfizer to quickly develop a Covid vaccine.
"Scientists all across the world since the Covid-19 pandemic have been really interested in how to use this technology to apply it to other diseases — other infectious diseases, cancers, even animal health and plant diseases," Wiig says.
An initial $500,000 is going to the University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington to make a seven year plan "so that we're able to be self-sufficient," says Professor John Fraser, the platform's other co-director.
He's based at the University of Auckland and says other countries are also making huge investments in RNA.
"It's just having that technology available and ready and fast for researchers in New Zealand to be able to use it."
That could be for another pandemic, says Wiig.
"There's no guarantee the Government would be able to do another deal with Pfizer or whoever the international player is in the future."
Or it could be an outbreak specific to Aotearoa.
"Imagine if you got foot and mouth disease into the country," Wiig says. "Having the ability to rapidly respond to that would be a big advantage for us... We'll be able to design new therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostics, test them here in New Zealand, and really importantly, manufacture them."
RNA is already produced here in NZ — but for now, only on a small scale.
Vaccine manufacturer South Pacific Sera, based in Timaru, is one of the few facilities making it.
"Before, when you needed enormous vats to produce this sort of product in, with RNA you only need vessels that are tens of litres in size," says co-founder William Rolleston.
"It's like a small brewery, a biotech brewery, so it actually fits our size of country much better.".
Once the seven year plan is approved, a further investment of $69.5 million over seven years will fund research and innovation for RNA development.
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