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Medicine

Delays Reported For Possible Covid-Inoculating Plasma Shot (register-herald.com) 125

Posted by EditorDavid from the shot-in-the-darkness dept.
"It might be the next best thing to a coronavirus vaccine," writes the Los Angeles Times. "Scientists have devised a way to use the antibody-rich blood plasma of Covid-19 survivors for an upper-arm injection that they say could inoculate people against the virus for months." Using technology that's been proven effective in preventing other diseases such as hepatitis A, the injections would be administered to high-risk health care workers, nursing home patients, or even at public drive-through sites — potentially protecting millions of lives, the doctors and other experts say. The two scientists who spearheaded the proposal — an 83-year-old shingles researcher and his counterpart, an HIV gene therapy expert — have garnered widespread support from leading blood and immunology specialists, including those at the center of the nation's Covid-19 plasma research.

But the idea exists only on paper. Federal officials have twice rejected requests to discuss the proposal, and pharmaceutical companies — even acknowledging the likely efficacy of the plan — have declined to design or manufacture the shots, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation... There is little disagreement that the idea holds promise; the dispute is over the timing. Federal health officials and industry groups say the development of plasma-based therapies should focus on treating people who are already sick, not on preventing infections in those who are still healthy...

But scientists who question the delay argue that the immunity shots are easy to scale up and should enter clinical trials immediately. They say that until there's a vaccine, the shots offer the only plausible method for preventing potentially millions of infections at a critical moment in the pandemic. "Beyond being a lost opportunity, this is a real head-scratcher," said Dr. Michael Joyner, a Mayo Clinic researcher who leads a program sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration to capitalize on coronavirus antibodies from COVID-19 survivors. "It seems obvious." The use of so-called convalescent plasma has already become widespread. More than 28,000 patients have already received the IV treatment, and preliminary data suggest that the method is safe.
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Delays Reported For Possible Covid-Inoculating Plasma Shot More

Delays Reported For Possible Covid-Inoculating Plasma Shot

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  • Before dismissing it as a conspiracy, there ARE people and/or corporations that would benefit short term if effective preventions are delayed. Who are these players and are they in the power of delaying things?

    • It's more likely that the paperwork required to approve the treatment is way the Hell more complicated than was planned for by the people who came up with the treatment.

      Because, in fact, the paper trail required to get a new treatment past the Feds is mind-numbingly long. Which is as it should be, what with people suing right and left if they happen to get an allergic reaction, or other unpleasant side-effect.

      And no, signing a release saying you won't sue if you have unpleasant results from the drug you'

    • I'd suspect trying to avoid a thalidomide disaster (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @12:51PM (#60290004) Journal

      Before dismissing it as a [bogus] conspiracy [theory], [who might benefit?]

      I'd be more inclined to suspect the regulators of fearing a thalidomide disaster being blamed on them.

      Convalescent serum innoculations are risky:

      They use plasma from people who just got over the disease - and so may also contain some live virus from the pathogen in question, or any other disease the serum donor may have (hepatitis, HIV, shingles, cytomeglavirus, spongiform encephalopathies, transmissable cancers, ...)

      SARS-CoV-2 is a particular problem for the live virus issue. It has been shown to hang out for a long time in several "privileged" tissues (and is suspected to do it in others), then come out weeks later - only to be beaten down again if the immune response is still strong, but to cause a relapse if not. For a recovered/recovering patient, still producing antibodies, that's OK. But transfer his serum into an uninfected victim - who is NOT producing his OWN antibodies - and you've just given him the disease.

      They serum can't be treated to kill pathogens without denaturing the antibodies which are the whole point of the treatment. Not all of these things can be screened for, and screening can have false negatives. So they risk giving the recipient the disease in question or another.

      This makes it suitable for a treatment if a patient already has the pathogen or a very high risk of it, especially if they have preexisting conditions that make their risk of death high.

      But for a temporary immunization? They might easily do more harm than good.

      That's why some of the pharma companies are working on coctail-of-monoclonal-antibodies immunizations/treatments based on antibodies harvested from survivors' plasma. There you get what you were after - the immune serum directed at the disease - but the pure quill: Just the antibodies (made by gene-engineered bacteria). Just the ones you want. No dangerous pathogens from the random survivors.

      Pricey (and profitable, of course). But far less dangerous.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Short answer seems to be yes. However it's easier to find them playing the stock market, where they are enthusiastically gambling on and profiting from other people's deaths.

      And by the way, the underlying premise of their gambling is that all the politicians will work together to continue insuring and defending the imaginary share prices in the stock markets around the world. One stock you should definitely not invest in is "Swamp Cleaning, Inc."

      Rational response to Covid-19 would have been different from t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        Upon review, my last paragraph was poorly worded. The "this" was a reference to the Wolfier post that I was replying to, not a self-reference. I should have made that clear, but "this" is often ambiguous.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      If I were a pharma exec I wouldn't go anywhere near this.

      You're talking about harvesting material from a person and injecting it into another person, on a massive scale. We do that all the time, but for critically ill patients, using systems that have been carefully developed over decades, and still shit happens (https://www.bbc.com/news/health-48596605; https://www.cbc.ca/strombo/new... [www.cbc.ca]; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]).

      Blood products for healthy people, massive scale, emergency deployment? No thanks.

    • Can we dismiss it as a conspiracy when we don't know if it will actually work?

      From TFA:

      scientists should first demonstrate that the coronavirus antibodies that are currently delivered to patients intravenously in hospital wards across the country actually work. "Once you show the efficacy, then the obvious next step is to convert it into an intramuscular" shot

      But sure, someone's holding back mass production to protect the illuminati. [eye roll]

  • and will their system create more antibodies to protect them or will this just drain their supply to nothing so they can get sick again.

    Might work as an emergency treatment but I cannot see it as putting us in a position of saying we have enough people immunized to have herd immunity.

    • I read a few other articles on this. My understanding is it would not be a cure or vaccine. It may not even do anything. They only know at this point that similar treatments for other viruses has helped in those cases and this one doesn't seem to cause any harm.

      Hypothetical: you pump out a few hundred million shots to everyone in a short period of time. If it actually provided immunity or even reduced odds of catching covid then it could provide sufficient short term herd immunity to kill covid at large

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      From the article:

      Joyner told the Times that 600 COVID-19 survivors donating their plasma each day could, depending on donation volumes and concentrations, generate up to 5,000 Ig shots.

      I don't know how long it's effective for, weeks? Months? But certainly doesn't seem like there would be any problem generating a sufficient supply for widespread use in prevention. We have a couple million COVID survivors at this point. We would just need some small fraction to donate on a regular basis.

    • For some reason, the "people farm" from Daybreakers [imdb.com] comes to mind. Luckily for "Daybreakers.Covid-19" we could recycle the red blood cells back into them, feed them and strengthen people back up for awhile, before putting them back into the "plasma gathering room". Fun for everyone!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      It's not meant to immunize, just to provide a short term resistance. It would likely be recommended for someone who was exposed to the virus to reduce their chances of actually getting the disease. For example, if you go to a party and then the host tests positive.

  • This therapy has been known for months. Maybe this is why Trump doesn't wear a mask. He knows he's been treated already.
  • The reason this is not interesting to pharma companies is because this can't be patented. It is an extract from machines that expect a salary...

  • It's cheap; no one wants it (Score:3)

    by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @01:05PM (#60290046) Homepage

    You can't make $billions by selling people's plasma. You need something patentable. No one is going to fix this unless they can make loads of cash doing so.

    • You can't make $billions by selling people's plasma.

      Err sure you can. The transfusion and use for medical purposes of plasma is a multi-billion dollar industry making profit of the backs of blood donations.

  • Please wake me in December (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @01:43PM (#60290202)

    When the bullshit election is done, one of the two goofballs has won, America has lost and we can get back to having a sensible discussion online.

  • Probably I've been reading too much Laird Barron (thank you, whatever motherfucker recommended him), but lately I've been thinking, why bother? This is life.

    I'm not suggesting we should do nothing, certainly let's exhaust our scientific resources in an attempt to attenuate this thing (not sarcasm), but let's also keep in mind that this is how it goes. The universe is big, bad, and impersonal, and nothing cares, except us.

    Yeah, I have no idea where I was going with that. Science marches on, and so does life,

  • These antibodies won't survive long and the donors are limited. Do they just want to make bank with some risky prophylactic for a handful of rich geriatrics while pretending to do something for the common good?

    The risks are large with a prophylactic, a side effect doesn't have to impact a big percentage to quickly be worse than the disease being prevented. Treating seriously ill people has far more leeway for serious side effects than a prophylactic. Having had a parent with bloodshock with after effects wh

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guppy ( 12314 )

      These antibodies won't survive long and the donors are limited. Do they just want to make bank with some risky prophylactic for a handful of rich geriatrics while pretending to do something for the common good?

      This is the big issue, as long as the material is harvested from humans, the volume doesn't scale up. Even if replaced by recombinant antibodies, cost and limited manufacturing capacity will prevent widespread usage. This is already a problem with the current therapeutic usage of convalescent serum, which is targeted at a much population of sick individuals (and which will have to compete with a new prophylactic injection for limited manufacturing capacity).

  • FTA: "scientists should first demonstrate that the coronavirus antibodies that are currently delivered to patients intravenously in hospital wards across the country actually work. "Once you show the efficacy, then the obvious next step is to convert it into an intramuscular" shot."

    This group doesn't have any proof that this method would work, they haven't shown that the antibodies they are using do anything against Covid-19. This is a group that is stating that it might work, but they should not wait for t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      But they DO have evidence. Convalescent plasma has already shown results. This is a refinement on convalescent plasma and should work in much the same way with reduced risks.

  • >Federal officials have twice rejected requests to discuss the proposal
    They can squander vast sums on hydrochloroquine, but an old proven approach?
    No way, there no way to make a pile of corrupt money from it.

  • its not quite so easy (Score:3)

    by hAckz0r ( 989977 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @04:43PM (#60290756)

    Giving convalescent plasma to an otherwise healthy person could also be transferring some of the latent virus particles, thus actually infecting the healthy person. To date only people with bad cases of the virus have received this treatment, so we don't know if any latent virus comes along for the ride with that treatment.

    If the virus is still present, the healthy person will slowly develop COVID-19 over the next 5 days or so, but they will also have the antibodies to beat the virus down, so this raises a number of interesting questions. Is it a good idea to intentionally infect someone while giving them the immune system tools they need to fight that infection? Will that infection therefor be mild enough to be worth the few days of sickness? Does this combination then shorten the total number of days of infection?

    Keep in mind that many of the previous vaccines were done using a live virus that had been deliberately weakened/attenuated as to allow the individual to develop full immunity against the more potent form of the same virus. Developing that weakened strain of the same virus is both very time consuming and extremely expensive to test, which is why almost every horse in the race is now betting on the RNA needed to produce spike protiens to initiate antibody production. That person's immune system still has to figure out how to build their own antibodies. But what if that patient were to receive the working "antibody design" needed to fight the unattenuated virus at the same time as the real virus? Would that person's immune system then be able to somehow clone the working antibody design and immediately and begin producing more of the same antibodies?

    To answer this we need to understand what factors in the blood are necessary to trigger the production of the same antibodies in the new patient. Maybe we need to also include some B-cells that know how to pass that "working antibody formula" on to the rest of the immune system? When the patient's own immune system sees that it works that B-cell should be promoted to start dividing wildly in response. If the foreign B-cell isn't rejected outright then the patient's naive immune system will then remember that formula and start producing it from day 1 whereas the COVID-19 virus will need 5 days of replication before symptoms even begin.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      That's why it should be tested. We don't know how all the what-if's will play out until it's actually tried.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Another plausible method for preventing potentially millions of infections at a critical moment is to lock up Donald Trump and let Andrew Cuomo take over for awhile.

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