Posted on 02/13/2020 8:57:59 AM PST by SeekAndFind
p>Right now scientists are trying to accomplish something that was inconceivable a decade ago: create a vaccine against a previously unknown virus rapidly enough to help end an outbreak of that virus. In this case, they're trying to stop the spread of the new coronavirus that has already infected tens of thousands of people, mainly in China, and given rise to a respiratory condition now known as COVID-19.
Typically, making a new vaccine takes a decade or longer. But new genetic technologies and new strategies make researchers optimistic that they can shorten that timetable to months, and possibly weeks — and have a tool by the fall that can slow the spread of infection.
What's the urgency?
"Vaccines are really our most successful tool to prevent an infectious disease," says David Weiner, executive vice president and director of the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia.
It used to take a long time to make vaccines, because scientists had to isolate and grow the virus in the lab. But now, it's possible to skip that step altogether and build a vaccine based on a virus' genetic sequence.
Chinese scientists made that genetic sequence from the new coronavirus public in early January, just weeks after the first infections with the virus were reported. That prompted several labs to start work on building a vaccine.
Vaccines work by teaching an individual's immune system to recognize an invading virus and neutralize it. The vaccine that Weiner and his colleagues are developing is what's called a DNA vaccine.
They'll first turn pieces of the new coronavirus' genetic code (which is RNA) into complementary snippets of DNA. These snippets will then be injected into someone's skin, where they will be taken up by skin cells. The skin cells will then turn those DNA sequences into proteins identical to the ones a virus would produce, and those will be what "teaches" the immune system to recognize the new virus.
Weiner and his colleagues are in the process of determining which viral sequences produce the best "teachers."
This isn't Wistar's first stab at rapid vaccine development. Weiner and his team worked on a vaccine for Ebola after an outbreak of that virus in 2014.
Including the initial time needed for animal testing and human safety testing, "We were able to go from no vaccine to a vaccine tested in the clinic in about 18 months — 15 to 18 months," he says. They also made a vaccine against the coronavirus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome, after an outbreak in South Korea. "And we were able to design and develop and move into the clinic in 11 months."
Weiner says he's hoping to halve that time with the vaccine they are making against the new coronavirus.
Keith Chappell at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, thinks he can do even better. He, too, has a vaccine that's based on the virus' genetic sequence. The Queensland team has come up with an approach it calls the molecular clamp. It works by improving the body's immune response to certain viral proteins.
"Our goal was to be able to hit 16 weeks from sequence information to having a product that is shown to be safe and effective [in lab tests] and is ready for administration to the first humans," Chappell says.
Right now, Chappell and his colleagues are also trying to figure out which genetic sequences will be most effective at helping the immune system recognize the coronavirus.
"Next steps will be moving into animal models for testing and also working out how to scale up to get to the levels that would be required in humans and beyond," he says.
Both Chappell's team in Australia and Weiner's team in Philadelphia, in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Inovio, are getting financial support from a fairly new organization called CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. CEPI is a global partnership of public, private and philanthropic organizations; it's also supporting efforts at the biotech companies Moderna and CureVac.
Ami Patel, a research assistant professor at the Wistar Institute, is working with David Weiner and others on a DNA vaccine against the new coronavirus. The team is in the process of determining which viral sequences produce the best "teachers" to help the human immune system defeat the virus.
Among other vaccine efforts worldwide, the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson is working on a vaccine, and GSK has also offered to help new vaccine efforts. Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a vaccine that's already being tested in animals, and vaccine efforts are also reportedly underway in China.
CEPI CEO Richard Hatchett says the organization was created when people realized that an Ebola vaccine had been under development for a decade and it still took more than a year to get it to people when the 2014 Ebola outbreak occurred in western Africa.
"There were a number of enlightened global public health leaders who said, 'You know, that shouldn't happen. We should have some kind of an organization to develop vaccines against epidemic diseases,'" he says.
Even in the rosiest of scenarios, Hatchett says, once the vaccine is in hand, it still needs to get to the people who need it, and that takes time — at least weeks to months, depending on the urgency.
Naturally, public health officials would like to have a vaccine as soon as possible. If the coronavirus outbreak pattern is anything like those of flu outbreaks, it will tend to taper off when the weather gets warmer and pick up as winter approaches and people spend more time indoors.
"We are making very aggressive efforts in the hopes of having a vaccine available — some form of vaccine available, potentially, as early as this fall," Hatchett says.
Ami Patel, a research assistant professor at the Wistar Institute, is working with David Weiner and others on a DNA vaccine against the new coronavirus. The team is in the process of determining which viral sequences produce the best "teachers" to help the human immune system defeat the virus.
Clarification that it is VIRAL PNEUMONIA
Chinese health authorities reported a group of cases of viral pneumonia to the World Health Organization (WHO) in late December 2019. Many of the ill people had contact with a seafood and animal market in Wuhan, a large city in eastern China, though it has since become clear that the virus can spread from person to person.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-new-coronavirus-what-we-do-and-dont-know-2020012518747
Yeah, I’ll let someone besides myself and my family be the guinea pigs for this vaccine. I remember the Swine Flu vaccine, and I’m not risking our health to be an early adopter. Sheesh, I won’t even buy a new model of car, knowing that it has bugs that need to be worked out by a few hundred thousand drivers doing stupid things that the engineers would never think of doing to a vehicle...injecting myself with a brand new vaccine just ain’t gonna happen.
The vaccine industry is pure evil - have no doubt about it
It is somewhere in the order of $100-$150 billion a year now worldwide they won’t tell you and you can’t find out the exact number
They pretty much own the Democratic Party; buy politicians ; and then enact legislation that forces you to inject this poison into your bloodstream so that they can profit on your suffering
The best way I can summarize these people and myriad of doctors that support their evil trade are do gooders from hell
There is absolutely no question about the fact that millions of children’s lives have been either snuffed out or ruined by these evil people forcing babies to have up to a dozen of these poisons injected into their bloodstream by the time they’re 18 months old
this is complete and utter insanity
Do you remember all the hubbub about measles last year?
Do you remember all the legislation passed in deep blue states that over ran all religious personal or medical objections - forcing children to have the measles vaccine , even though measles kills hardly anyone?
Have you seen the evil government minions going after doctors who are trying to provide exceptions to families with medical histories that would show that there would be counter reactions to such?
I am not new to this I’m a chemical engineer and I’ve been studying virology and neuroscience for over 25 years now
I made my first colloidal silver generator after purchasing one from somebody else, and reverse engineering it , in the early 1980s
I made colloidal silver every single day and my children and wife and I drink it and none of us ever get sick
The federal government and medical establishment for years and years tried to put out false information saying that colloidal silver does not do anything and turn to either gray or blue in some false condition called aygria
Here we are some 40 years later and they finally backed off and now there are thousands of providers of colloidal silver and generators that you can purchase and the FDA is finally stop threatening them
Silver ion is a well-known bactericide and buyer side and is in 22,000 approved medical products ; all of course are external
So keep this in mind when you see all of these government scare tactics to convince you that turn to your heroes , the vaccine industry, go to your government herded center , and get your shot - your flu shot; your measles shot ; you this and that shot - just like an animal!
It is time for us knowledgeable human beings to stand up to this government intrusion into our lives and the deliberate ruining and poisoning of children
There’s a section of the article entitled, “What’s the urgency?”
Note how NOTHING that follows talks about the “why,” just about how vaccines work and how various scientists are going about developing one. Curious.
New vaccine in months. FDA approval in years to decades...Bring Out Your Dead
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.
For H1N1: From April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010, CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (range: 195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (range: 8868-18,306) in the United States due to the H1N1 virus (AKA Swine Flu ).
For our references, here is a description of the vaccine for another deadly flu strain that infected MILLIONS in 2009:
SOURCE: https://www.everydayhealth.com/drugs/influenza-virus-vaccine-h1n1-live
The nasal H1N1 influenza virus vaccine is a “live virus” vaccine. H1N1 influenza virus vaccine is also available in an injectable form, which is a “killed virus” vaccine. H1N1 influenza virus vaccine works by exposing you to a small dose of the virus, which helps your body to develop immunity to the disease
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I haven’t done enough research on vaccines to come to the same conclusions as you, but I know for a fact that the prospect of making money (or keeping an existing income stream going) often tempts people to do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do.
FWIW, if everyone popped a few cheap pills a day - mostly in the Fall and Winter - then the incidence of flu and other disease would be lot lower. Vitamin D (2000 - 5000 units/day), Vitamin C (1000mg at least, either on time release or in several dosages) and zinc (50 mg). All of these help the immune system. Get decent amounts of sleep, and wash hands frequently with soap or an alcohol solution. Do those things, and you will reduce the incidence of flu by a very large percentage without the need for a vaccine.
SARS, a less infectious but more deadly coronavirus, also became a vaccine chase, but it failed.
The SARS vaccines left permanent lung damage among other problems.
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Frankly I’d rather take my chance with the virus than with a vaccine that was rushed through the trials and approval process.
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