evidence: Several COVID-19 vaccines have contributed to saving lives and reducing unsustainable pressures on health care systems since 2021. The mRNA technology represents a critical addition to the arsenal of platforms that can be used in vaccine production, not the least in response to pandemics when scalability and flexibility are essential. The wide-spread use of the two COVID-19 mRNA vaccines over the past years demonstrates the significant potential of the technology and shows that serious adverse effects to the two licensed mRNA vaccines were exceptionally rare [78], providing a strong foundation for future applications. [...] The approval of two effective and safe COVID-19 mRNA-vaccines in late 2020 propelled the mRNA vaccine field into a new era. The discovery that the use of modified bases in in vitro-transcribed mRNA circumvents undesired inflammatory responses and increases protein production following delivery to cells demonstrates the value of basic research. The results published by Karikó and Weissman in their seminal 2005 paper received little attention at the time but laid the foundation for critically important developments that have served humanity during the COVID-19 pandemic.