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COVID-19: New hope rides on protein-based vaccines being developed in many countries. Here's How They Work.
DW ^ | December 2021 | Alexander Freund

Posted on 01/06/2022 3:31:48 PM PST by SeekAndFind

The European Medicines Agency has approved the Novavax coronavirus vaccine. The protein-based vaccine may be a real alternative, both for bringing forward the global vaccination campaign, and for vaccination skeptics.

Many people who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19 say they don't trust the technology behind mRNA vaccines, such as in BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna shots. They say they also don't trust vector-based vaccines, like the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson jabs.

Many say they are instead waiting for protein-based vaccines, which have proven themselves over years as providing safe protection, for example against Hepatitis, influenza, tetanus and whooping cough.

Now, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved the first protein-based vaccine, produced by American company Novavax, against SARS-CoV-2.

Protein-based vaccines appear to offer a good level of protection against COVID-19 and produce fewer side effects than those existing and approved mRNA and vector-based vaccines.

Experts say protein-based vaccines are urgently needed for the global vaccination program against COVID-19. They point out that while many richer nations are getting busy boosting their populations with a third jab, many people in poorer nations have yet to get receive a first dose.

Researchers say protein-based vaccines could help people in poorer nations get vaccinated. Protein-based vaccines are cheaper to produce than mRNA vaccines and they can be stored at temperatures of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius (36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit), which makes them easier to transport. So, it would be practical to deploy them in the so-called Global South.

It's taken somewhat longer to develop protein-based coronavirus vaccines. It wasn't until November 2021 that the United States pharmaceutical firm Novavax submitted its approval application to EMA. It's also expected that the US will approve the vaccine for use there by the end of the year.

Indonesia gave the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine emergency approval at the start of November. Submissions for approval are ongoing in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

Novavax may well be ahead in the approval stakes. But other vaccine developers, such as India's Biological E and China's Clover Biopharmaceuticals, are expected to submit their own protein-based candidate vaccines for approval as well.

Then there's also the British-French company, Sanofi-GlaxoSmithKline, a Canadian firm called Medicago and a South Korean one called sk bioscience. Each one continues to progress with their development of protein-based vaccines.

One key point is how protein-based vaccines are produced in many more countries. In some, such as Cuba, Russia and Taiwan, protein-based vaccines are a standard in national vaccine campaigns.

How do protein-based vaccines differ?

Protein-based vaccines include a miniscule, look-alike version of the COVID-19 spike protein.

The immune system reacts to the protein in the vaccine, and it does so a lot faster because — contrary to other vaccines — it doesn't have to produce the protein itself. The protein is delivered in the vaccine.

Novavax does not contain any killed coronavirus. Instead, the developers used a recombinant nanotechnology to generate the tiniest particles that resemble the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

Using insect cells, the developers created a nanoparticle that the body's immune system recognizes as the virus ("a virus-like particle") — although it is not the virus — and then reacts accordingly.

Those nanoparticles do not carry any DNA of the virus and therefore produce fewer side effects in the human body. However, the human immune response is weaker.

Stronger effect with adjuvants

To strengthen the immune response, the developers add so-called adjuvants to these vaccines. In the case of the Novavax vaccine, the adjuvant is saponin (extracted from Quillaja saponaria or the soap bark tree), along with cholesterol and phospholipids.

Some vaccine critics say some adjuvants, such aluminum salt, are harmful.

But meta-studies have so far failed to find any links between such adjuvants and serious side effects or allergies.

Long development

Before mRNA vaccines got their long-awaited break in the COVID-19 pandemic, protein-based vaccines were considered a future-oriented, tried and tested technology.

"Protein-based vaccines are just very well-known, people's bodies tend to tolerate them better [than other vaccines], and there are no big questions left to answer," said Guzman.

"But one disadvantage is that it takes longer to develop protein-based vaccines than mRNA or vector-based vaccines."

That's the view of Carlos Guzman, director of the department of Vaccinology and Applied Microbiology at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, and a professor at the Hannover Medical School.

How effective are protein-based vaccines?

It may take longer to develop them, but protein-based vaccines are cheaper to make, easier to transport and effective as well.

Novavax has said its vaccine is 90.4% effective. That puts it in the same league as the mRNA vaccines from BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna.

That efficacy rate was taken from studies in mid-2021 in the US and Mexico.

A British study, meanwhile, conducted when the alpha variant of the coronavirus that was dominant in the UK, showed the Novavax vaccine to have efficacy of 83%.

But in a study conducted around the same time in South Africa, where the beta variant was dominant, the Novavax vaccine scored an efficacy of just 50%.

If newer variants, such as delta and omicron, keep showing themselves to be ever more transmissible, then it's possible all vaccines will see a drop in their efficacy — that is, the protection they offer people.

This is why we all need booster jabs. But at the same time, poorer nations may not be forgotten, as the risk of new virus variants developing and the pandemic continuing indefinitely can only be stemmed when people around the globe can get vaccinated.

Bringing global vaccination forward

Next to existing COVID-19 vaccines, many millions of doses of which have been pledged to poorer nations through the COVAX program, protein-based vaccines will no doubt be used there as well — once they are approved.

Novavax has pledged a billion doses through COVAX.

The company says it could produce 100 million doses — possibly even 150 million doses — per month.

Its chief executive, Stanley Erck, has said that many of the first doses the company produces will go to poorer nations. That was always their goal, he said.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: chinavirusvaccine; covid; novavax; proteinbased; vaccines; vaxxx
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To: SeekAndFind

Therapeutics Therapeutics Therapeutics


21 posted on 01/06/2022 4:10:16 PM PST by butlerweave
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“ When will the ChiComs (including Traitorfauci) be held to account for their bioterrorism attack on the World?”

About the same time that their co conspirators in the demonrat party are held to account


22 posted on 01/06/2022 4:12:23 PM PST by dsrtsage ( Complexity is just simple lacking imagination)
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To: humblegunner

I had Sea Monkeys when I was a kid. The could do all kinds of tricks. Their best one was impersonating brine shrimp; they were great at that.


23 posted on 01/06/2022 4:32:33 PM PST by noiseman (The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.)
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To: SeekAndFind

I thought the Covid vaccines were 100% safe and effective. What’s better than that?


24 posted on 01/06/2022 4:34:46 PM PST by grumpygresh (Civil disobedience by non-compliance; jury and state nullification. )
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To: SeekAndFind

Putting aside whether they are safe/effective, does anyone really think Big Pharma will allow this Euro stuff into the US?


25 posted on 01/06/2022 5:00:42 PM PST by ZOOKER (Until further notice the /s is implied...)
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To: MayflowerMadam

https://www.buy-pharma.md/Ivermectin-p-923.html
This is from overseas.

I got mine thru http://www.Pushhealth.com. They wrote me an Rx I got filled at my neighborhood pharmacist.


26 posted on 01/06/2022 5:01:17 PM PST by Delta 21 (It started as a virus, and mutated into an IQ test.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Sorry, it’s not the mNRA technology I don’t trust, it’s BIGPharma.

I don’t trust Liars!


27 posted on 01/06/2022 5:09:58 PM PST by SoConPubbie (Mitt and Obama: They're the same poison, just a different potency)
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To: SeekAndFind

Some years back one of our purveyors of fear porn was commenting on a thread about the governments plans to save us all from the scamdemic they were planning back then.

FEMA (?, maybe not them) was going to save us all from an airborne plague by driving around in busses and taking us to some kind of safety zones (concentration camps).

I cant find that thread any more but I remember commenting that there was no way in hell that I or my family would voluntarily get on “the governments overstuffed rolling galvanized coffin of miasmic death” to escape a pandemic of which I was supposedly already in middle.

I think theyve already thoroughly proven its a lie and the obvious intent is to kill and maim as many as possible.

I havent taken the clot shots and I wont get on this bandwagon either even if it is made of prions...I mean, protiens.


28 posted on 01/06/2022 5:18:21 PM PST by gnarledmaw (Hive minded liberals worship leaders, sovereign conservatives elect servants.)
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To: ThunderSleeps

Good for you. Me, too. The other day I stqrted getting what I recognize as a cold but didn’t want it to go beyond that so I took some extra D-3. Zinc and Vit C and drank plenty of fluids and in about 4 hours I was feeling fine.

Yes, they can shove their shots. I’m almost 71 and as you know, if we don’t look out for ourselves, we’re in trouble. Those evil bastards sure aren’t looking out for us.


29 posted on 01/06/2022 5:28:58 PM PST by laplata
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To: Delta 21

Thanks for the links. Did you have to give them symptoms?


30 posted on 01/06/2022 5:33:50 PM PST by Delmarksman
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To: ransomnote

Your assessment is accurate.


31 posted on 01/06/2022 5:52:41 PM PST by Arcadian Empire (The Baric-Daszak-Fauci spike protein, by itself, is deadly.)
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To: Carl Vehse

Exactly! Why does no one in WORLD address this??!


32 posted on 01/06/2022 5:53:10 PM PST by dkGba
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To: SeekAndFind

Will NOt take them, no matter what.


33 posted on 01/06/2022 6:29:08 PM PST by backwoods-engineer (But what do I know? I'm just a backwoods engineer.)
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To: humblegunner

They could well be.

And there again, maybe they are not.

Ah, but we aren’t allowed to know what’s in them... for whatever the hell reason.

So where does the thinking and prudent man default? Based on what we have seen should we trust that the Gov, CDC, WHO, pharma is as clean and pure as the wind-driven snow? Should we just assume everything’s fine? Considering all we have seen these last two years?

Nah. You and I both know that would be dumb.


34 posted on 01/06/2022 6:45:37 PM PST by Sarcazmo
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To: SeekAndFind

If there was a gun to my head, this is the one I’d take.


35 posted on 01/06/2022 6:56:58 PM PST by Mozzafiato
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To: Mozzafiato
I've been waiting on a viable and conventional vaccine to be available. I've got more to learn about Novavax but this could be the one that I would take. When I learned that the first vaccines out the gate were RNA based, I was very uncomfortable with them. This rapidly escalated to “hell no”.

The roll out of Novavax is on target with the timeline and steps the company outlined about a year ago. I'll be getting into the technical details as I can find them re. Novavax so I can make an informed decision when it rolls into US release.

36 posted on 01/06/2022 7:34:33 PM PST by Hootowl99
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To: Delmarksman

No. 3 text messages and the “consultation” cost 65 bucks and the pharmacy was calling me saying it’s ready to pick up.


37 posted on 01/06/2022 10:04:43 PM PST by Delta 21 (It started as a virus, and mutated into an IQ test.)
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To: dkGba
"Exactly! Why does no one in WORLD address this??!"

While conservative columnists have noted that the ChiCom virus came from the ChiCom lab funded by Fauci, I haven't seen any discuss the possibility this release of the ChiCom virus was a bioterrorist attack.

38 posted on 01/07/2022 4:44:55 AM PST by Carl Vehse (A proud member of the LGBFJB community)
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To: SeekAndFind

Prions, anyone?


39 posted on 01/07/2022 4:48:26 AM PST by Nik Naym (It's not my fault... I have compulsive smart-ass disorder. )
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To: Carl Vehse

Well whether believe release was intentional or not, still haven’t heard one word about world wide steps anywhere to address preventing it from happening again. This ‘research’ is a bioweapon and accidental or not it is unnecessary and evil research that has now forever changed the world and our country as we know it, and may or may not be end of humanity some day. If nuclear bomb was released ‘accidentally’ I’m willing to bet some kind of followup action would be taken. We’re on same side- for our country and individual rights. I wish in my heart of hearts that I hadn’t lived so long as to witness our country and world as it is right now and that none of this had ever happened to anyone of us. Be healthy and be safe


40 posted on 01/07/2022 6:09:50 AM PST by dkGba
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