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It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

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Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#11

Post by feross »

Key quote:

> The question ultimately comes down to risk vs benefit. We need to get over our evolved but suboptimal instinct to avoid directly causing harm preferentially over passively allowing harm to occur. In the end, the amount of harm is all that matters. In a situation like this, delivering a vaccine as quickly as possible while maintaining sufficient safety and efficacy, there is a sweet spot somewhere that minimizes disease, death, and disruption. We want that sweet spot, even it if means delivering a vaccine that has not been tested as much as we would like. It would mean accepting more risk form the vaccine in order to reduce risk from the pandemic.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#12

Post by kemiller2002 »

DalasNoin wrote: post #10
melling wrote: post #2

The technology was years in the making. DARPA was also involved. “In October 2013, DARPA awarded Moderna up to approximately $25 million to research and develop potential mRNA medicines as a part of DARPA’s Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention and Therapeutics, or ADEPT, program”

But it is very interesting that mRNA vaccines can be very quickly developed for new viruses. The underlying technology may have taken years, but it can be applied to new viruses as soon as the virus is sequenced.

I think this is the silver lining for this pandemic. Covid-19 is lethal, I'm not discounting that, but in terms of real lethality, this was a good test run to show that this approach works. (At least in my lay person's knowledge.) What really scares me are the highly lethal flu strains (I think H5N5?) The fact that we can produce a vaccine this quickly now gives me hope when we encounter a scenario like out of the movie Contagion.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#16

Post by oblio »

spamizbad wrote: post #5
melling wrote: post #2

The technology was years in the making. DARPA was also involved. “In October 2013, DARPA awarded Moderna up to approximately $25 million to research and develop potential mRNA medicines as a part of DARPA’s Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention and Therapeutics, or ADEPT, program”

One of the best $25 million in defense spending ever.

The internet? :-)

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#17

Post by redis_mlc »

melling wrote: post #2

The technology was years in the making. DARPA was also involved. “In October 2013, DARPA awarded Moderna up to approximately $25 million to research and develop potential mRNA medicines as a part of DARPA’s Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention and Therapeutics, or ADEPT, program”

"The first identified case [of MERS] occurred in June 2012 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, ..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndro...

Shame a vaccine wasn't made for SARS-1 in 2002.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#18

Post by tialaramex »

kemiller2002 wrote: post #12
DalasNoin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is very interesting that mRNA vaccines can be very quickly developed for new viruses. The underlying technology may have taken years, but it can be applied to new viruses as soon as the virus is sequenced.

I think this is the silver lining for this pandemic. Covid-19 is lethal, I'm not discounting that, but in terms of real lethality, this was a good test run to show that this approach works. (At least in my lay person's knowledge.) What really scares me are the highly lethal flu strains (I think H5N5?) The fact that we can produce a vaccine this quickly now gives me hope when we encounter a scenario like out of the mo…

High lethality is often associated with reduced transmissibility. Which makes sense - dead people certainly aren't going to cough on you.

In a Sci Fi movie maybe the virus has a long delay, you're infectious for a month with no symptoms, then drop dead in seconds. But in the real world that's less likely the more extreme it gets.

One thing that did make this virus more dangerous was that many humans became infectious significantly before they realised they had symptoms. With some viruses you get symptoms, then (sometimes as a result of the symptoms) you become infectious, making it easier for public health messages to be effective. "Stay at home if you have symptoms" is extremely effective if people aren't vectors until 12-24 hours after the symptoms are obvious, but almost useless if they're infectious a week earlier.

I'd argue that countries which think the lesson is "We developed a vaccine quickly, good job" are mistaken. The lesson was just, "Elimination strategy works" and the many countries that didn't even attempt that got lucky they weren't decimated for their incompetence.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#19

Post by alanbernstein »

ballenf wrote: post #13

Just curious -- would it be that much harder to develop a vaccine that was itself contagious? Recipients would expel the vaccine in their own respiration?

Interesting, like a fully engineered virus with the same spike proteins, but none of the "bad stuff"? Seems tricky, I think in order to be contagious, it needs to replicate, which is part of what makes viruses so harmful, right? Even if you can make it harmless, replicating means mutations will happen, so that's an interesting new kind of risk to take.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#20

Post by tehjoker »

I don't know how Moderna was made, but the Pfizer vaccine is a modified spike protein: they use two edits to lock it in a pre-fusion conformation. Maybe this is easy to model in software, but I suspect that does take a little bit of trial and error to confirm it works in vitro too.
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