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Medicine Biotech

A New Type Of COVID-19 Vaccine Could Debut Soon (npr.org) 148

"A new kind of COVID-19 vaccine could be available as soon as this summer," reports NPR: It's what's known as a protein subunit vaccine. It works somewhat differently from the current crop of vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. but is based on a well-understood technology and doesn't require special refrigeration.

In general, vaccines work by showing people's immune systems something that looks like the virus but really isn't. Consider it an advance warning; if the real virus ever turns up, the immune system is ready to try to squelch it. In the case of the coronavirus, that "something" is one of the proteins in the virus — the spike protein. The vaccines made by Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer contain genetic instructions for the spike protein, and it's up to the cells in our bodies to make the protein itself.

The first protein subunit COVID-19 vaccine to become available will likely come from the biotech company, Novavax. In contrast to the three vaccines already authorized in the U.S., it contains the spike protein itself — no need to make it, it's already made — along with an adjuvant that enhances the immune system's response, to make the vaccine even more protective.

Protein subunit vaccines made this way have been around for a while. There are vaccines on the market for hepatitis B and pertussis based on this technology.

And meanwhile, the article points out, there's also another company — the pharmaceutical giant Sanofi — that's also working on its own protein subunit vaccine against the coronavirus.
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A New Type Of COVID-19 Vaccine Could Debut Soon

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  • Can we mix it with other vaccines, as some governments insist on doing?

    • Can we mix it with other vaccines, as some governments insist on doing?

      I wouldn't want to mix it, as injecting Covid vaccine and a flu vaccine simultaneously, because your body might react too strongly. Or not strong enough. But i haven't seen anyone suggesting this.

      There seems to be no reason not to get two different vaccines, with a reasonable gap between both injections. They all result in spike proteins being in your body, and your body creating defenses against anything with these spike proteins. How the spike protein got there would be irrelevant.

      • by mdecerbo ( 9857 )

        Can we mix it with other vaccines, as some governments insist on doing?

        I wouldn't want to mix it, as injecting Covid vaccine and a flu vaccine simultaneously, because your body might react too strongly. Or not strong enough. But i haven't seen anyone suggesting this.

        If you haven't seen anyone suggesting this, you didn't look hard enough. For just one example, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel was interviewed in April [cnbc.com]:

        Eventually, Bancel added, Moderna hopes to be able to have a two-in-one vaccine of sorts that protects against seasonal flu and Covid. The company in September announced its intentions to make a flu vaccine.

        “What we’re trying to do at Moderna actually is to get a flu vaccine in the clinic this year and then combine our flu vaccine to our Covid vacc

  • by azrael29a ( 1349629 ) on Monday June 07, 2021 @04:15AM (#61461594)
    Johnson & Johnson is not an mRNA vaccine, but an adenovirus-based one like Astra-Zeneca
    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Johnson & Johnson is not an mRNA vaccine, but an adenovirus-based one like Astra-Zeneca

      There's a lot of confusion, and I'm not sure which is which. mRNA vaccines require three parts to carry it - the mRNA strand, a protective fatty blob to protect the RNA strand, and a material that will get the cell to accept it. So an mRNA vaccine infects the cell and the cell's mechanism manufactures the spike protein.

      Now, I've heard different ways the AZ and J&J vaccine work. One way is that the adenovirus is co

      • Both AZ and JJ use the adenovirus to carry DNA into the nucleus, which then makes the mRNA that goes to the cytoplasm where the spike protein is made. The DNA remains apart from the chromosomes. Neither have spike proteins on the adenovirus. Furthermore, the adenovirus vector is replication deficient and cannot spread or infect the human host beyond the amount delivered in the dose.

    • You are correct that the J&J is not an mRNA vaccine, but the summary never said it was. All it said is that the 3 vaccines "contain genetic instructions for the spike protein", which is true for both mRNA vaccines and adenovirus-based vaccines.
      • You are correct that the J&J is not an mRNA vaccine, but the summary never said it was. All it said is that the 3 vaccines "contain genetic instructions for the spike protein", which is true for both mRNA vaccines and adenovirus-based vaccines.

        J&J vaccine does not contain any genetic instructions (=mRNA), but a full adenovirus with COVID's spike attached to it.

  • The trial was completed months ago but approval is still being withheld. Is this because they're being paranoid about 'new stuff'?

    [Full disclosure: I was part of the UK phase 3 trial for this - got the placebo which I discovered when I was offered another vaccine as part of our roll out, so I feel like I've got a stake in this!]

  • by sugar and acid ( 88555 ) on Monday June 07, 2021 @05:14AM (#61461710)

    There are 2 basic classes of vaccine for a century or more.

    1.Vaccines that contain the actual antigen in large quantities, often with adjuvents to promote a strong immune response. This was originally killed inactive cultured virus, but this article is the new class where just an antigen is cultured and purified. It's more sophisticated and pure, but both have the same problem, the antigen comes in on the injection, and no more will be available till another dose. Therefore adjuvants that maximise the immune response are very important.

    2. Virus like carriers. Which could be attenuated virus that isn't deadly, or a virus that is very close to the virulant virus. This goes all the way back to cowpox vaccines for smallpox with Jenner. These infect the body, produce antigen by the bodies cells and induces an immune response. The production of antigen is long lived (days) so do not need adjuvants like above. The new generation are mRNA vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer), that smuggles some copies of the mRNA for an antigen into cells to produce that for a short time. It isn't infectious and it doesn't get incorporated into genomes, just produces the antigen. Similarly, AAV vaccines (AZ and the Russian one) use an engineered attenuated virus that isn't related to the target virus to essentially do the same.

    Both have advantages and disadvantgeuos, but a year ago the cultured antigen with standard adjuvant like being discussed here seemed to be the most likely to get through into the clinic. Most well understood mechanism, and a biopharma manufacturing already well setup to deliver this. But the mRNA and AAV's both won.

  • Calling it 'Novavax' is a bit on the nose, innit?

  • by MrKevvy ( 85565 ) on Monday June 07, 2021 @07:08AM (#61461896)

    Amazingly the article doesn't even mention the AstraZeneca vaccine as if it doesn't exist, which already does exactly this:

    "The Oxfordâ"AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is a replication-deficient simian adenovirus vector, containing the full-length codonâoptimised coding sequence of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein along with a tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) leader sequence."

    Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Just like this proposed vaccine, it is very popular with less-developed countries as it keeps at normal refrisgerator temperatues isntead of needing specialized -70C freezers. Probably around a billion doses given so far, including myself. The EU has 400 million allocated.

    • You misunderstood this "new approach".

      It has nothing to do with the AZ vaccine or others.

      Definitions:
      Antigene - the thing in your blood and body that
      a) makes the immune system nervous
      b) makes the antibodies dock on and attempt to block them from entering a cell

      Antibody - see above, the thing the immune system (amoung other things) needs to build to defend against the infection
      - those antibodies bind to antigenes

      Normal vaccines one way or the other:

    • It is a protein instead of a modified adenovirus. The hoped for final effect for your immune system is the same for all the various methods of vaccination: antibody titer from your B cells and generation of appropriate memory T cells.
    • optimised coding sequence of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein

      The coding sequence for the protein is not the protein, though.

    • It's different because the protein is ready-made where the AZ vaccine uses a nerfed virus to make the protein on site.

    • Novavax has shown strong efficacy in trials. It's 96% effective against the native Wuhan strain, 86% against the UK strain, and 55% against the South African strain. There were no deaths or hospitalizations in any of the vaccinated participants. Notably, AZ isn't effective against the SA strain.

      https://ir.novavax.com/news-re... [novavax.com]

  • Maybe /. should think about removing this article. It's full of erroneous information and is just stirring up the populace.
    • by methano ( 519830 )
      I contacted NPR on this and they pointed out that instructions for the spike protein are delivered via an adenovirus. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut until I'm sure I know what I'm talking about.
  • This was a different protein vaccine tested. The results might not be the same. But for this one, the results were that the mRNA vaccines lit up whole parts of the immune system better than the protein vaccine:
    https://www.cell.com/immunity/... [cell.com]

    Just guessing, I don't have science behind me here, but it's conceivable that the mRNA vaccines causing a few days of protein synthesis are closer to what the immune system evolved to counter than a single short dose of protein and adjuvant.

    Or maybe the new one will wo

  • How it's functionally different from an inactivated virus is the part I don't get, but hot damn it's ingenious.

    The plants do something very valuable â" they make a lipid shell that surrounds a bunch of the viral proteins, with the proteins sticking out.

    "The plant will assemble the protein in a shape and form that is looking like the virus," says Nathalie Landry, Medicago's executive vice president for scientific and medical affairs. "So, if you look at an image of it, it looks like a virus, but it cann

  • https://redstate.com/jenvanlaa... [redstate.com]

    "A person believed to be among the highest-ranking defectors ever to the United States from the People’s Republic of China has been working with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for months, sources inside the intelligence community have told RedState on condition of anonymity. The defector has direct knowledge of special weapons programs in China, including bioweapons programs, those sources say."

    "RedState’s sources say that’s partially true. FBI Direc

  • https://www.icandecide.org/ [icandecide.org]

    If what I had early last year was the Covid, I'm not impressed as a 50+yo lifelong smoker. I had a bug in the summer of '17 that was WAY worse.

    If you're trusting that TPTB, Big Pharma, Big Tech and the MSM are there to inform and protect you, you deserve what you get. Even the Founding Fathers tried to warn you about what invariably happens to societies...

  • https://www.globalresearch.ca/... [globalresearch.ca]
    CPSO commands Ontario’s doctors not to make any statements that might be considered anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing, or anti-lockdown. It forbids them to promote “unsupported, unproven” treatments for COVID-19. (Unproven by what standards? CPSO doesn’t say.) Doctors are further forbidden to make comments that might encourage people to act contrary to public health orders.
    Finally, there’s a naked threat: say the wrong thing and you

  • âoeIt's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooledâ --Mark Twain (b. 1835)

"Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!" -- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President's_Analyst_

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