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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

#41

Post by djsumdog »

tzs wrote: post #31

The layman's explanation I've seen about how these mRNA vaccines work is that they get some of your cells to manufacture a protein that is characteristic of the virus, which the cells release and the immune system takes care of. Then later if you get the virus, the immune system already recognizes that protein and takes care of the virus. Question: why do we need to have our cells make the protein? Couldn't we synthe…

It's not just proteins. The cells infected with the mRNA present those proteins on the outside of the cell to be recognized by other cells which start a chain process.

Skip to around 12:30 in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Idb_lCU4o

He goes through the entire biochem process. Even the cells infected with the mRNA will need to be removed by the immune system using cytotoxic T-cells, so they need to get the chain process going.

The reason we have "memory" for viruses is because a ton of random stuff in our immune systems evolved to multiply exponentially when they come in contact with viruses or proteins that indicate certain infections. It's a lot of stuff and you can't just inject that memory in; you have to stimulate the immune system to create them at a very large scale.

It's not just antibodies. There are memory T-cells, parts of the complement system that get activated; a whole host of things.

My issue is that our immune systems are incredibly complex, and there are a lot of components to this "memory" that are not entirely understood. Every other vaccine is an inactivaed virus (via heat treatment) or attenuated (virus run through other hosts to make it less dangerous to humans). The first vaccine was just a close relative: cow/horse pox instead of smallpox. The former are not dangerous in humans, but seem to produce the same immune memory.

The mRNA vaccines are at attempt to say, "Let's strip out all that other stuff and find just the thing we need." But our immune systems are incredibly complicated. It will be interesting to see if these things actually work at scale.

The trials were to make sure the vaccine is safe in a short about of time. It's not really going to test effectiveness until deployed at scale.

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

#42

Post by opwieurposiu »

tzs wrote: post #31

The layman's explanation I've seen about how these mRNA vaccines work is that they get some of your cells to manufacture a protein that is characteristic of the virus, which the cells release and the immune system takes care of. Then later if you get the virus, the immune system already recognizes that protein and takes care of the virus. Question: why do we need to have our cells make the protein? Couldn't we synthe…

1. In 40 years, there have only been 20 protein drugs approved.

2. Yes the cells go back to to normal after the mRNA degrades. The mRNA does not last long, it is like data in ram vs data on a hard drive.

See this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4-DMKNT7xI

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

#44

Post by djsumdog »

shdon wrote: post #36

The article say that they spent a decade of research on mRNA vaccines before. That was obviously well before anybody knew about SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19. Does this mean that the research basically was about creating sort of like a "template" vaccine that can then be specialised or programmed with the specifics of the thing you're trying to vaccinate against?

None of those came to market. Many did make it through trials. This is more about pushing this as a first onto the market so pharma companies can finally prove they're safe, and then making a shit ton of money on more vaccines after.

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

#45

Post by dragonwriter »

shdon wrote: post #36

The article say that they spent a decade of research on mRNA vaccines before. That was obviously well before anybody knew about SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19. Does this mean that the research basically was about creating sort of like a "template" vaccine that can then be specialised or programmed with the specifics of the thing you're trying to vaccinate against?

> Does this mean that the research basically was about creating sort of like a "template" vaccine that can then be specialised or programmed with the specifics of the thing you're trying to vaccinate against?

That may (or may not) have been the effect (at least within a narrow family of similar viruses), and is definitely something they market about their “mRNA platform”, but their immediately-previous mRNA vaccine work which was ongoing when they shifted to SARS-CoV-2, was specifically directed at MERS-CoV, another very similar betacoronavirus of significant public health impact (though a lot less widespread than SARS-CoV-2 has become.)

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

#46

Post by ashtonkem »

tialaramex wrote: post #18
kemiller2002 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In many ways, this was a worst case scenario for countries without a history of fighting respiratory diseases. It’s lethal enough to rack up a significant body count, but “safe” enough for large portions of the population to disregard the risk and potentially transmit it. Oh, and it’s airborne and you’re infectious before you have symptoms.

Ironically, a disease with a much higher case fatality rate probably would’ve killed fewer Americans, since we’d be more aligned on stopping it, and it would have a greater tendency to burn itself out.

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

#47

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

I’m glad to see this and we need to concentrate on speeding this process up. This isn’t the last pandemic and all things considered this one was a pretty benign one to have to fight. The next one might not just kill mainly the old and weak and might need much more than a mask (that we still can’t get people to wear!) to prevent its spread. Hopefully before then, we can work to get everyone more on the same page and have a rapid vaccine task force ready.

My brother is a doctor and he got his Pfizer shot yesterday. Less than one year has passed since the first case in the USA. I consider this one of the great accomplishments of science. It will go unnoticed by many idiots on social media but it is an amazing achievement by all the scientists and doctors involved.

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

#48

Post by DalasNoin »

unchocked wrote: post #40

Yes. We need accelerated testing. In the case of a pandemic, we need to make better use of volunteers. I believe that as the history of this one is reckoned with, one of the more interesting moral failures to be acknowledged will be the failure to utilize challenge testing protocols with willing volunteers (give them the vaccine and then deliberately expose them to the virus. It is a calculated risk.) Earlier phases…

Maybe a new test would look like this:

1. Vaccinate humans and animals and see if they create antibodies and test if they can neutralize the virus.

2. Infect animals on placebo and vaccine on purpose.

3. If it improves outcome, infect humans on the vaccine.

The old system could be run in parallel

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

#49

Post by bluGill »

tzs wrote: post #24

Suppose an mRNA vaccine is developed for some virus, but it fails to clear phase 1 safety testing. Question: what would be the likely reasons for that? In particular, is it almost certainly going to be due to whatever carries the mRNA, or could the mRNA itself be the problem? If it is the carrier in which potential safety issues lie, does that mean that once we have one successful safe mRNA vaccine for virus A, then…

Phase one is about dosage at least as much as safety. The most likely reason to fail is probably that it doesn't produce an immune response at any reasonable dosage.

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

#50

Post by detaro »

fat-chunk wrote: post #38
tialaramex wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It makes me wonder how the world would cope today with a Bubonic Plague or Spanish Flu, those two I reckon would probably be more similar to your hypothetical Sci-Fi disease.

Bubonic Plague is still around, quite deadly if untreated, antibiotics work if given quickly enough (and are used as a preventative measure for contact persons). Large outbreaks are rare.
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