If you’ve ever administered or received a COVID-19 vaccine, chances are it was based on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology — a medical breakthrough decades in the making and finally achieved thanks to the coordinated effort and enormous funding mobilized by the pandemic.

The promise of mRNA vaccines is immense, researchers said. Several vaccines, including for influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, have been approved or are in the approval pipeline.

Now the same technology is being tested in hundreds of clinical trials for conditions that include not only infectious diseases but also many kinds of cancer.

And with the mRNA therapeutics market expected to grow to $30 billion by 2030, research momentum is strong — for now.

But recent cuts in federal research grants and the current adm

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