Feds Race to Make SARS Vaccine

Wired ^ | 5-28-03

[Prince Charles]

Fifteen or 20 years to create a new vaccine is considered quite speedy. So the federal government's blueprint for a shot to stop the SARS epidemic in a mere three years seems positively head-snapping.

Can it be done?

Certainly, says Dr. Gary Nabel, chief of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "If everything went perfectly," he qualifies. "If all the stars were aligned."

[Prince Charles]

Ping.

[aristeides]

No mention here that I can see of the immunity workers with civets and such animals reportedly have in China. What is in effect a vaccine may already be available.

[blam]

"No mention here that I can see of the immunity workers with civets and such animals reportedly have in China. What is in effect a vaccine may already be available."

Yup. A lot of us could be dead in three years.

[Cicero]

I sure hope they put a different team in charge of dealing with SARS than the one appointed to deal with a possible smallpox emergency. Those guys shuffled their feet and dithered for two years, and still have barely accomplished anything.

The way I figure it, SARS is likely to break loose next fall. If things go really wrong, we could see tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of deaths world-wide in the first year it really gets loose.

So, three years is better than ten. But I hope Bush has managed to put some competent people in charge this time, not a bunch of clintonoid condom pushers and sex educators.

[vetvetdoug]

A vaccine for the Feline Coronavirus actually results in worse disease, not less, when cats catch the virus.

I guess someone needs to tell the Pfizer company and about a 100,000 veterinarians this little piece of information. What I can tell, the technology for the vaccine in cats is effective with few side effects because of the nasal delivery system. I think I read spin here.

[I'll be your Huckleberry]

From what I read last night, the animal vendors in China may have had the virus before the mutation,

Info

would it be possible to use their blood as a vaccine?

[Prince Charles]

I was wondering about that info myself. Thanks for your insight.

[Prince Charles]

Gosh, remember the bad old days of that boob Joycelyn Elders as Surgeon General of the United States? What a dismal chapter in American medical history.

[Judith Anne]

Now THAT is a revolting thought! I'd forgotten about her...

[goldstategop]

Its more likely the virus will mutate over time to a less lethal strain so it can continue to spread itself into new hosts. That is why the vast majority of bacteria and viruses don't kill us. They need us as much as we need them.

[Betty Jo]

Just think if Don Wiley was in this race!

[Chemist_Geek]

Just wait for the Constituitional fundamentalists to show up on this thread...

"Ah whipped out my handy pocket Constitution and Ah cain't find anywhere in here where they can steal MY money to pay for these 'scientists' to play!"

[CobaltBlue]

>>would it be possible to use their blood as a vaccine?<<

Not exactly a vaccine, but you're on the right track.

A vaccine is made out of a killed or disabled virus. Smallpox virus is made from vaccinia, which is cowpox, but confers immunity to smallpox. Other vaccines are made from the causative virus.

What vaccines do is stimulate the immune system to make antibodies against the virus, so your immune system is ready to go when you come in contact with the virus.

A person who has already become immune to the virus has various components in their immune system which recognize the virus and kill it. The most important of these at this time is Immunoglobulin G (IgG). But IgG only works if the person donating it - in blood serum - has been exposed to the disease and has specific components of the blood which are already immune. So in a rare disease, you can't use serum or IgG from the population in general, only from those who have immunity.

So it's sort of like a vaccine, only instead of giving a killed or disabled virus, you give the part of the blood that remembers the virus and kills it.

[I'll be your Huckleberry]

Thank you for that easy to understand explanation.