Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

biorxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 131 posts

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#81

Post by chemeng »

gewa wrote: post #47
zibbity-rw wrote: post #3

This is the one headline I’m constantly afraid of reading... do any HN biotech experts have any comments or feedback? Is this a serious cause for concern?

Please note, that neutralization by antibodies is only one of the many possible ways how our immune system can take action. Antibody recognition is still possible with the found mutant: "To determine whether 501Y.V2 is still recognized by non-neutralizing antibodies, the binding of polyclonal sera (from Fig.2a) to a recombinant 501Y.V2 RBD+SBD1 protein and an RBD+SBD1 from the original lineage was assessed by ELISA (…

This is correct, but just want to add that many may interpret this as a positive sign, it is not necessarily. In many cases, binding antibodies increase cell infectivity. Also, there is some research that indicates the presence of non-neutralizing antibodies without the corresponding neutralizing antibodies and humoral response may be a factor in the development of antibody dependent enhancement. As far as we know, it is the neutralization potency that strongly correlates with disease severity.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#82

Post by sjg007 »

mc32 wrote: post #11

If we can expect more surprises like this, movement will have to be curtailed till we’re sure we have things under control (like SARS). We can’t have the whole world economy in lockdown because a new strain spread because prior immunization is ineffective against the variant.

My guess is we will need to FDA approve the mRNA vaccine development platform so we can develop a cocktail of spike mRNA vaccines and you will take 1 or more of them. We will need some kind of rapid clinical trial procedure to get updated mRNAs tested.. I am not sure what they do with the yearly flu vaccine in this regard but a similar approach is necessary. Then we will need a rapid surveillance program as well.

We will also need to update / create more antibody treatments like Regeneron's.

But that's a lot of technology to solve the wear a mask and social distance problem.

We need to keep the fire from spreading because it will just come back and burn down the things it missed the first time.

I suspect we will be dealing with rolling covid lockdowns for the next 10+ years.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#83

Post by discardedrefuse »

zibbity-rw wrote: post #3

This is the one headline I’m constantly afraid of reading... do any HN biotech experts have any comments or feedback? Is this a serious cause for concern?

I found this on Wikipedia.

"On 7 January 2021 it was reported that Pfizer researchers had found the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in tests involving 20 blood assays to be capable of affording protection against one of the 501.V2 variant mutations (N501Y, shared with variant B1.1.7). Further investigation was to be undertaken to ascertain the level of protection involved."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501.V2_variant

Which came from this article.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/08/pfizer-vaccine...

But I can't find the original or subsequent studies.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#84

Post by mikem170 »

wk_end wrote: post #36

The current headline (“strongly resistant to past immunity”) is editorialized and not what the research here shows. It’s resistant to donor antibodies, which is definitely unfortunate and concerning, but there’s more to immunity than just antibodies, and even more to antibodies than just the ones donated. Preliminary research [1] shows that vaccines are still effective, at least, and likely that implies natural immun…

Yep. It's an irresponsible headline, like so many others, renewing panic even amongst the crowd here.

I hope your comment and others like it are not lost amongst all the others so quick to call for a doubling-down of imposed quarantines and lock downs without regard for collateral damage, based on their partial knowledge of the immune system and lack of perspective.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#85

Post by valarauko »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #56

This is how the FDA's refusal to balance up-side risk is going to damage all of us. They're only interested in minimizing the risk from a treatment itself, and pay little to no attention to the risk from not having any treatment. It's been a full year since the first vaccines were formulated, and it took the FDA 11 months to give the OK. That was a large streamlining of their normal processes, but not a meaningful ba…

On the flip side, you have a sizable portion of the population that feels even the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the FDA was rushed (To be clear, I'm playing the Devil's Advocate here - I personally don't disagree with the FDA's decisions, and got my own shot weeks ago)

Genuine Q: which steps of the process do you see as superfluous? Pfizer announced the end of the phase 3 trials on November 18th, they submitted an application to the FDA for EUA on the 20th of November (or sometime shortly after), and the EUA was granted on the 11th of December.

It didn't take 11 months for the FDA to give the OK. It took 11 months to design a vaccine from scratch, conduct phase I safety trials, phase 2 human safety and dosage trials, and a phase 3 trial to determine efficacy. This includes actual production of the mRNA & its vector in quantities sufficient for the trial, subject recruitment, shipping logistics worldwide to participants, administration of the test doses, data collection, analyses, and compiling results. Honestly, 11 months from start to finish seems like an amazingly short time to achieve so much.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#86

Post by drran »

dougmwne wrote: post #51
beamatronic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could just wear a mask and social distance and not congregate indoors with random strangers for long periods of time

These are necessarily temporary measures. Life cannot go on forever with these restrictions in place. Either medical science will find a way to limit the danger or people will adapt to their new, more dangerous world. I am not an anti-masker, but asking for permanent social distancing is not realistic.

In Asia, some people are doing this for decades.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#87

Post by chemeng »

gewa wrote: post #39

Please note, that neutralization by antibodies is only one of the many possible ways how our immune system can take action. Antibody recognition is still possible with the found mutant: "To determine whether 501Y.V2 is still recognized by non-neutralizing antibodies, the binding of polyclonal sera (from Fig.2a) to a recombinant 501Y.V2 RBD+SBD1 protein and an RBD+SBD1 from the original lineage was assessed by ELISA (…

Looks like this was posted again, so I'll post my response here as well:

This is correct, but just want to add that many may interpret this as a positive sign, it is not necessarily. In many cases, binding antibodies increase cell infectivity. Also, there is some research that indicates the presence of non-neutralizing antibodies without the corresponding neutralizing antibodies and humoral response may be a factor in the development of antibody dependent enhancement. As far as we know, it is the neutralization potency that strongly correlates with disease severity.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#88

Post by rflrob »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #56

This is how the FDA's refusal to balance up-side risk is going to damage all of us. They're only interested in minimizing the risk from a treatment itself, and pay little to no attention to the risk from not having any treatment. It's been a full year since the first vaccines were formulated, and it took the FDA 11 months to give the OK. That was a large streamlining of their normal processes, but not a meaningful ba…

Given that most of the vaccines were produced "at risk" (i.e. before the trials showed that they were effective), I doubt that if the FDA had approved these vaccines on the day they were designed, we would have significantly more doses in people's arms today.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#89

Post by etiam »

Arubis wrote: post #5

Pulling directly from TFA, > Here we show that this lineage exhibits complete escape from three classes of therapeutically relevant monoclonal antibodies. Furthermore 501Y.V2 shows substantial or complete escape from neutralizing antibodies in COVID-19 convalescent plasma. These data highlight the prospect of reinfection with antigenically distinct variants and may foreshadow reduced efficacy of current spike-based v…

Sure hope we're not globally in the process of inducing maladaptive immunity to emerging strains that turn out to get extensive spread...

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

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#90

Post by timr »

chemeng wrote: post #87
gewa wrote: post #39

Please note, that neutralization by antibodies is only one of the many possible ways how our immune system can take action. Antibody recognition is still possible with the found mutant: "To determine whether 501Y.V2 is still recognized by non-neutralizing antibodies, the binding of polyclonal sera (from Fig.2a) to a recombinant 501Y.V2 RBD+SBD1 protein and an RBD+SBD1 from the original lineage was assessed by ELISA (…

Looks like this was posted again, so I'll post my response here as well: This is correct, but just want to add that many may interpret this as a positive sign, it is not necessarily. In many cases, binding antibodies increase cell infectivity. Also, there is some research that indicates the presence of non-neutralizing antibodies without the corresponding neutralizing antibodies and humoral response may be a factor i…

Everything you've written is speculation or assertion, whereas the OP's comment is a factual statement about the limitation of the work. They're showing that this mutation escapes a few particular antibodies. That's all.

At the very least, the current headline "strongly resistant to past immunity" is editorialized and completely misleading, and should be changed to the title of the paper.

> In many cases, binding antibodies increase cell infectivity.

Citation absolutely required. I am unaware of an example of this, let alone "many cases".

Post reply on HN