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Medicine Google The Almighty Buck

Larry Page Is Quietly Funding Efforts To Develop a Universal Flu Vaccine (theverge.com) 57

Posted by BeauHD from the flu-fighting dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google co-founder Larry Page is funneling money from his charitable foundation to a private flu-fighting initiative run as a for-profit company, TechCrunch reported. The program offers free flu shots to children in Oakland, California-area schools. Page also has a second company funding efforts to create a universal flu vaccine, according to the report. The free flu shots are offered through a group called Shoo The Flu, which started funding flu shots for both elementary and kindergarten through eighth grade schools in 2014. Shoo the Flu reimburses the Alameda County Public Health Department and school districts for the cost of the program.

The second company, Flu Lab, provides funding for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenge for Universal Influenza Vaccine Development. Page and his family were initially contributing funding to the challenge directly, but they were replaced by Flu Lab. Flu Lab also supports the nonprofit Sabin Vaccine Institute, which works to expand vaccine access. The funding established the Sabin-Aspen Vaccine Science & Policy Group, which met in 2018 to discuss efforts to develop a universal flu vaccine. Shoo the Flu's director is also the CEO of Flu Lab, and TechCrunch reported that Shoo the Flu will soon move under the umbrella of Flu Lab. The report notes that both Shoo the Flu and Flu Lab are private, for-profit companies and therefore not required to file public tax returns.

"However, the funding for Shoo the Flu comes from Page's charitable foundation, the Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation, which does have to file public returns," reports The Verge. "That makes the money flowing into the company public; Page's foundation gave Shoo the Flu over $4.1 million between 2015 and 2017, TechCrunch reported. What the organization did with that money is not as readily available."
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Larry Page Is Quietly Funding Efforts To Develop a Universal Flu Vaccine More

Larry Page Is Quietly Funding Efforts To Develop a Universal Flu Vaccine

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  • Believing there will ever be a universal anything in nature, shows a fundamental ignorance of basic biology.

    Sure, a broad-specrum ... why not?
    A universal one? You sound like a snake oil fraud.

    • Re:Life ... will find a way. (Score:5, Informative)

      by ibpooks ( 127372 ) on Thursday December 12, 2019 @08:28AM (#59511992) Homepage

      No, the effort for a universal flu vaccine is a legitimate scientific effort. Flu is grouped in to four basic types A - D, and within at least type A, the annual strains of the flu virus that change seasonally are virtually all due to variations in the proteins hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. Flu subtypes will often be labeled like A(H1N1) to designate the type and protein variation in that particular strain. There is further variation based on specific genetics.

      The current technology in flu vaccination only can target the specific H and N protein combinations and sometimes not even that high. So it requires a significant yearly effort to catalog all of the circulating strains, predict which ones will be most dangerous over the next year, and then culture and distribute a vaccine for those three or four worst strains expected to be circulating.

      The so-called universal flu vaccine seeks to target the flu virus at a higher level in its classification, perhaps the entire A or B type for example. They don't mean for it to be a universal forever cure for flu, but it would enable the creation of vaccines that are effective for decades perhaps. Or least take some of the burden of prediction out of the process so that we aren't surprised by circulating strains that flare up which aren't covered by the annual vaccine.

      • +1 to ipbooks, universal in this case means that it isn't strain specific. This is why you don't need to get, say, a mumps shot every year: it's a universal vaccine.

      • I wish I had mod points. An insightful and elegant explanation.

    • "A universal one? You sound like a snake oil fraud."

      You must be one of those vaccine-sceptics or as they call them noways kid-cemetary-enthusiasts.

    • I'd rather have a broad-spectrum vaccine that works against all viruses, but apparently no one wants to fund that...

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

    • Believing there will ever be a universal anything in nature, shows a fundamental ignorance of basic biology.

      Yeah that Polio vaccination was an utter failure.

      Another brain dead post brought to you by our resident brain less BAReFO0t.

      • Believing there will ever be a universal anything in nature, shows a fundamental ignorance of basic biology.

        Yeah that Polio vaccination was an utter failure.

        Polio is still a work in progress, made extra complicated by the special trade-offs of the oral live virus vaccine.

        Smallpox is the golden standard, eradicated in 1980, no one has died of it since then except for one laboratory accident in 1978, after which the holding of it was really tightened up. Rinderpest is the other example as of 2011 [wikipedia.org], but we s

        • eradicated in 1980, no one has died of it since then except for one laboratory accident in 1978

          Ummm, you put the period in the wrong place. Since 1978 was BEFORE 1980, the correct sentence should read "eradicated in 1980, no one has died of it since then" without the qualifier....

          • I should have been more clear, the dates were the official declarations. Health authorities set up an intense monitoring system, and they wait until "enough" time has passed from the last known infection "in the wild." For smallpox. the last case of the worst version was in 1975, of the not so bad version in 1977 (1% vs. 30% mortality, and confers immunity against the worst). The authorities felt confident enough to proclaim success in 1980, and we don't know of anyone getting it in any way since then.

  • As to scale, US$4.1 million is simply not a large expense for the likes of Larry Page over 3 calendar years.

    Increasing the likelihood of herd immunity, the goal of the flu vaccine, by seeing to the vaccination of a segment of the population among the least likely to get it on their own might be construed by others as a sound strategy.

    • Vaccines are great, but the idea of a flu vaccine is silly. It doesn't work. You don't know what strain of flu you are going to get, so they just use a mixture of the most common ones in your region. The last flu vaccine was only 9% effective at the end of the season (so they claim) because new strains appeared. But it is a big moneymaker so it continually pushed in the US.

      • Actually it is not very expensive, 25 - 50$
        And most health insurances would cover that.

      • They don't use the ones in your region, it'd take too long because we grow the viruses in eggs instead of more modern rapid techniques. The strains usually travel in epidemic waves from Asia, so the predominant ones from there at certain times of the year are usually the ones that spread out. But yes it is mostly guess work, and if we were to guess wrongly and have the right sort of avian flu such that we have to cull our chickens, then we can't grow new vaccines... it is a big risk and a good reason to i

      • The last flu vaccine was only 9% effective at the end of the season (so they claim) because new strains appeared.

        The odds of someone getting the flu at all, especially during a non-epidemic/pandemic season aren't necessarily all that high, so if they get protected in the earlier part of the season that just might do the trick for them. See also how the strains don't always change year-to-year, for example none did for the Northern Hemisphere between the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons [wikipedia.org], so I skipped it in 2011.

        • Its worthwhile also because even if a different strain became predominant than expected, if the strain that they predicted is close enough you will still see some titer to the actual strain and get partial protection.

          • Very good point, and partial protection could make the difference between a nasty time at home vs. hospitalization, or that and death. One of the theories about why the 1918 pandemic hit the young harder is that older folks may have had exposure to a similar strain when they were younger.

            This could also be critical in a future pandemic, if enough people get really sick, medical systems will run out of capacity, especially for heroic measures. The U.K. had to send one patient to Sweden in the last pandemic

      • It's an even bigger moneymaker to let people get the flu and then stick them with huge hospitalization bills.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bobm ( 53783 )

      I agree, this is pocket change to him and it's over 3 years which makes it even less money.

      Google says he's worth 62B

  • Nanobots is the answer. Once we have them they can go in and do flu, cancer, plague, the lot. Research the shit out of how to make them small enough and how to make sure they don't go all grey goo on us and we're laughing.

  • If the other rumors I heard have any trace of truth in them, Larry Page is very much concerned with living a very long life. Now that he is middle-aged, it is natural that he thinks about health issues that come with age.
    I've been told by insiders at pharma companies that they are pitching a lot of age-related research to him, capitalizing on his concerns.
    So this immunization project sounds like an attempt to sanitize the area in which he lives, as each each flu a person catches is said to shorten life expe

    • "Now, don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
      It slips away, and all your money won't another minute buy"
       
      Sorry Larry. Maybe you shouldn't have been so evil when you were living.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LostOne ( 51301 )

      You know what? It doesn't matter if his desire for a better flu vaccine is selfish or not. The result is the same: more funding for research into making a better flu vaccine. And vaccination is one of those things where the selfish goals of the rich are best furthered by sharing the results with the general population. The more people with immunity to a disease, the less likelihood the rich people get sick so it's in their best interest to share the results of this sort of research, and even fund vaccinatio

  • How the mighty have fallen!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday December 12, 2019 @09:52AM (#59512264) Journal
    Gone were the days when super billionaires went to Africa and hunted big game animals. Whole hunting party, elephant guns, gun bearers, safari hats and khaki short, and they did it personally. Hunted most big game to extinction, almost but not quite.

    Now they are looking for microscopic creatures to hunt and annihilate. And they are not doing it themselves, and hiring a bunch of white lab coat people to do it.

    • If it is the trigger pull in front of the baggage train that you want to replicate, I guess we can let him push the plunger on the syringe of viral protein going into the goat that's going to make the monoclonal antibody and take a picture. Bonus: unlike the elephant, it doesn't even hurt the goat!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tokul ( 682258 )

      Well. Some late billionaire spend a fortune in hunting shipwrecks. This one sold his soul to find universal cure for constantly mutating disease. Medical science was so far from Michigan and Stanford.

      • This one sold his soul to find universal cure for constantly mutating disease.

        The trick is for those white lab coat types out on a virus safari to find a bit of the virus that can't mutate without the virus becoming non-viable, and target that instead of the current whole hemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteins. There are five other proteins, and a quick search confirmed that antibodies can be made against RNA, the genetic material that codes for all these proteins. So I would guess there's reasonable

    • Hunted most big game to extinction, almost but not quite.

      Much better these days, when the local rebels "hunt most big game to extinction" to finance their "revolution".

      Note, by the by, the revolution in quotes. That's because revolutions always make me think of The Who and "Won't Get Fooled Again" - "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"....

    • Most effective method of not catching the flu... is washing your damn hands.

      If the flu transmits like "the common cold", the best way is to never touch your eyes or nostrils unless you've just washed your hands. It takes quite a bit of effort to develop that habit, but afterwords, in the last over three decades after I read about that study, it has worked very well.

  • Apart from the vaccine being universal, or partial guesswork, as it is now ...

    The flu kills 61,000 in the USA [cdc.gov] alone every year.

    Meanwhile, here in Canada, at least in some provinces, we provide a free flu shot [ontario.ca] annually.

    This is one advantage of universal health care, which the USA is so opposed to, because entrenched interests convince the masses it is wrong, and it is 'socialism' and socialism is leftism, and leftism is communism, and therefore bad.

    No. Universal health care is not perfect, and will never be.

    • Here in the US we have either free flu shots are work sites or cheap flu shots at Walgreen, Walmart, or Rite Aid. You can get flu shots almost anywhere here in the U.S. and if they could they'd put the shots next to candy.

      Problem is, I get the flu, then I pass it on to Joe, and then on to Billy, the virus has changed. It's that simple how the flu vaccine can become ineffective.

      My question is why are they calling Measles an epidemic in the news when clearly what you've written above via the cdc the Flu is

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kbahey ( 102895 )

        Problem is, I get the flu, then I pass it on to Joe, and then on to Billy, the virus has changed. It's that simple how the flu vaccine can become ineffective.

        My question is why are they calling Measles an epidemic in the news when clearly what you've written above via the cdc the Flu is more so an epidemic.

        Two very different cases ...

        Measles is a solved problem: it does not mutate as often, and has no variants. So vaccination, with booster shots, give you lifetime immunity to the disease. This immunity is f

  • Now if only there could be as much focus on developing a vaccine for RSV (respiratory syncytial virus). Have a cold that lasts for a couple of weeks or longer before starting to clear up instead of the usual week? There's a good chance it's RSV. And RSV is particularly nasty because our ability to retain immunity to it decreases with age (yes, even in healthy people with proper immune function) so that as an adult, you can actually be infected by the *exact same strain* repeatedly.

  • Larry Page Is Quietly Funding Efforts To Develop a New Strain of Influenza

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