Posted on 06/12/2020 8:10:57 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
An Israeli scientist says she has laid the groundwork for a vaccine against COVID-19 that is likely to work even if the virus mutates significantly.
“I think that if coronavirus mutates, this vaccine would still be effective,” Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern told The Times of Israel.
Frenkel-Morgenstern, head of Bar Ilan University’s Lab for the BioComputing of Complex Diseases, has filed a provisional US patent application for her research identifying 25 epitopes that she concluded can build immunity against COVID-19.
She said that the epitopes — tiny protein segments that are part of short chains of amino acids known as peptides — can be used to provide immunity. An injection, oral or nasal dose, containing preformed synthetically made epitopes will prompt the body to create antibodies and stimulate virus-fighting t-cells, she added.
Frenkel-Morgenstern believes that if a pharmaceutical company adopts her findings, which were just published in the journal Vaccines, it could use them to create a vaccine and start testing it within six months to a year. She said that such a vaccine would reduce the severity of the illness and provide immunity, but may not provide the full protection that other vaccine teams expect to achieve.
However, she said her research could have the advantage of providing a ready vaccine that is likely to work if the virus undergoes a significant mutation. There have already been lots of tiny mutations to SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, but while these aren’t expected to affect planned vaccines, there are questions over whether a more notable mutation may impact the effectiveness of a vaccine.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofisrael.com ...
“I think that if coronavirus mutates, this vaccine would still be effective,”
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I think I’ll pass.
They’re going to bring about the end of the world as we know it.
They’re going to bring about the end of the world as we know it.
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