[HN Gopher] The first human trial in Europe of a coronavirus vac...
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The first human trial in Europe of a coronavirus vaccine has begun
in Oxford
Author : dustinmoris
Score : 77 points
Date : 2020-04-23 18:51 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| oli5679 wrote:
| There is a strong argument for doing a challenge trial, using
| young people, on this candidate.
| twic wrote:
| The thing i like most about this vaccine is that it's a T-cell
| vaccine.
|
| Very broadly speaking, the adaptive immune system has two arms.
|
| One arm, humoral immunity, is about detecting foreign substances
| in the spaces outside cells: B-cells make antibodies, antibodies
| inspect molecules floating around, a match triggers the B-cells
| to proliferate and make more antibodies, and then antibodies tell
| macrophages and various other brutal cells to destroy and eat
| everything in sight, resulting in inflammation, but hopefully
| killing the invader.
|
| The other arm, cellular immunity, is about detecting foreign
| proteins inside cells: T-cells make T-cell receptors, T-cell
| receptors inspect peptides presented on the surface of cells
| through some amazing machinery culminating in the MHC I protein,
| a match triggers the T-cells to proliferate, and the T-cells
| themselves go round triggering self-destruction of cells
| presenting the foreign peptides.
|
| (I'm leaving out MHC II and helper T cells here, let alone
| T-regulatory cells, gamma delta T cells and all sorts of other
| things i don't know about)
|
| Both wings are useful in response to a viral infection, but
| ultimately, the cellular immunity is key. Viruses commandeer and
| replicate inside cells, so to stop an infection, you need to find
| and kill those cells. Cellular immunity does that.
|
| Vaccines based on injecting proteins or dead viruses can only
| develop humoral immunity. Vaccines based on modified viruses,
| like this one, can also develop cellular immunity.
|
| In theory. So far, there are no T-cell vaccines.
| krillln wrote:
| so, we can say that B-Cell vaccines are good enough coz they
| have already been working on other types of viral infection,
| right?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| They are likely good enough yes, presence of strong
| antibodies pretty much means there's no way the virus can
| outpace the immune response, and it often is neutralized so
| strongly you wouldn't even notice inoculation.
| twic wrote:
| Bear in mind that there are lots of viruses we don't have
| vaccines for, and not for want of trying.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, it's good enough for some diseases. And it's clearly
| not good enough for some others.
| jdalgetty wrote:
| The comments on that article are something else!
| toyg wrote:
| Reading comments on any mainstream news site inevitably brings
| total loss of faith in humanity. This goes double in a country
| where tabloids dominate public discourse.
| keithnz wrote:
| I think comments tend to attract certain people. The vast
| majority of people don't say anything so you are left with
| the squeaky wheels. But because when you read it it feels
| like a overwhelming amount of people that are seemingly very
| ignorant it does feel quite disheartening. I've personally
| limited my exposure to comment sections of most news these
| days.
| prmph wrote:
| Indeed, I couldn't find a boring one. So much for the famed
| understated-ness of the British
| sdwa wrote:
| I think we've gradually been Americanised. I don't recognise
| their behaviour as British, I find it all a bit embarrassing
| really.
| LandR wrote:
| I'm about far from anti-vaxer stance as its possible to be, so
| please don't think this is where this is coming from, but isn't
| this crazy quick compared to how long vaccines usually take?
|
| Is the long time to create vaccines not usually to make sure they
| are safe? What is different now that it can be done quicker? Is
| it just the sheer amount of effort and cash being thrown at it?
| fuckknows wrote:
| So according to In The Pipeline[1] they essentially modified
| their existing MERS vaccine so that it worked for SARS-COV-2.
| Their original vaccine had already gone through phase 1 trials
| and had shown efficacy and no harmful side effects.
|
| [1]
| https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/23/a-...
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| Thanks
| enaaem wrote:
| Parallel processing. Normally a few labs would work on a
| particular vaccine. If a potential vaccine fails they have to
| retry something else and this whole process can take a long
| time. Now, pretty much all virus labs in the world are rushing
| to create a vaccine. There are 70 potential candidates last
| time I've read, so there is a high change one them works.
| [deleted]
| afarrell wrote:
| A lot of labs were researching MERS and SARS already.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Coronavirus shares 90ish percent of its genetic material with
| SARS. So they had a head start.
| gabipurcaru wrote:
| WHO publishes a list of the vaccine landscape here -
| https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/key-action/n...
|
| As of April 20 2020, there were 5 in clinical evaluation and 71
| in preclinical evaluation. I'm a layperson, but very interesting
| to see the different techniques and testing methodologies used.
| [deleted]
| chrisandchips wrote:
| I don't know much about the subject - when one of these
| institutions discovers a vaccine, do the rest just give up and
| settle the loss of having come second in the race? Do the private
| companies then automatically switch to producing as much of the
| successful vaccine as possible to meet demand and turn a profit?
| egwor wrote:
| I imagine they keep going since side effects could be better,
| or it could be more effective.
| fuckknows wrote:
| Even if we have one, the larger problem will be scale. Having
| more than one type of effective vaccine available may actually
| be useful, since our existing manufacturing capacity for the
| different manufacturing processes can be used.
| glofish wrote:
| not really, usually there is less competition for developing
| vaccines as the timelines are more relaxed and it would be a
| waste of money to have several groups discover the vaccines to
| the same disease
|
| Multiple different vaccines could (and probably will) be
| discovered. These may have different mechanisms and tradeoffs
| and those too will be taken into account when scaling up to
| population.
|
| Now who owns what, who gets it first, and who gets paid and in
| what way, those are thorny issues that have not yet been worked
| out.
| rrmm wrote:
| No, in fact I think Bill Gates has fronted the money to develop
| several candidate vaccines fully to shorten the time to
| widespread introduction as much as possible.
|
| Likely all of them would be developed anyway as some might end
| up failing (either during testing or during mfr) and I imagine
| demand is going to be high.
| dustinmoris wrote:
| no, there's still IP which plays a role and different vaccines
| have different pros and cons and logistically it might also be
| easier to scale multi different vaccines to the demands of the
| world population than a single one.
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(page generated 2020-04-23 23:00 UTC)