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Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

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Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#121

Post by retrac »

amyjess wrote: post #91
_Microft wrote: post #14

Prepare to read the headline "mRNA vaccine trial for " a lot in the future. My guess is that they are going to produce mRNA versions of basically any vaccine (and then some) in the future. The nice thing about the technology seems to be that you only need to exchange the mRNA payload while the surrounding delivery method can be reused. That makes it not only a fast method to create a vaccine but a very convenient way…

At the beginning of the pandemic, people theorized that public health will influence future media for a generation, much like WW2 did. For decades, we got war TV shows, war movies, war comics, etc. Hogan's Heroes ran into the '70s, Sgt. Rock was published until the late '80s, and so on. And I think we're about to see the same with media based on public health efforts. One of the things that'll come out of this is tha…

Oh, pandemics can certainly have long-lasting social and cultural effects. I ran into something quite interesting just the other day while playing with Google's Ngram on a whim. This is the occurrence of the word "contamination" in contemporary English texts in the last century: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=contamination&... (Care to guess what happened in the early 1980s?)

I'm actually a little worried about this. Of course, I'm happy it'll boost interest in vaccine development. But the terror and fear in reaction to AIDS led to a general biosecurity obsession that became biosecurity paranoia and then hysteria and then a renewal of persecution of homosexual men for a couple decades. Who says we'll be immune to the worse effects of fear, paranoia and panic this time around?

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#122

Post by harshreality »

kingkawn wrote: post #58
inglor_cz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it means rerunning the trials again. These requirements will have to be loosened for anti-Covid vaccines. They are tailored to other diseases, but SARS-CoV-2 mutates too fast. The flu vaccine has an exception, too, otherwise it wouldn't be possible to prepare the correct vaccine (against the expected dominant strain) on time.

One bad autoimmune reaction from a poorly engineered vaccine and the whole society will boycott the mRNA vaccines forever after. Safety is higher priority to ongoing viability than speed.

But it doesn't make sense in this context. They're literally changing nothing except the mRNA sequence.

If a new vaccine is made by taking a gene sequence from a virus protein that's already in the wild, and packaging it into a delivery mechanism (LNP) that's already approved for another vaccine...

If there are any strange reactions to the new spike protein, that would also be caused by the wild virus spike protein, so it's an obvious competing harms situation where the vaccine should be approved, at least so long as the pandemic is ongoing.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#124

Post by bart_spoon »

honksillet wrote: post #28
_Microft wrote: post #14

Prepare to read the headline "mRNA vaccine trial for " a lot in the future. My guess is that they are going to produce mRNA versions of basically any vaccine (and then some) in the future. The nice thing about the technology seems to be that you only need to exchange the mRNA payload while the surrounding delivery method can be reused. That makes it not only a fast method to create a vaccine but a very convenient way…

Does anyone know why they haven't released a Delta varient vaccine? Is seems that it would just involved we changing the mRNA sequence in a computer at the factor, but I'm really just guessing. Also maybe it is considered a whole new vaccineand needs to go through approval again.

One reason is because they've found that simply boosting with the original mRNA gives a massive spike in protection even against Delta, apparently on par with variant specific versions of the vaccine.

Another is that recent studies are showing that natural infection provides much more comprehensive, long-lasting immunity against all variants than the vaccination does, while vaccination with the current vaccines offers much more immunity than individuals who have never been vaccinated or infected. So it would seem like the best course of action moving forward may be to vaccinate everyone possible initially to prime their immune systems and reduce the severity of the disease, and then allow Covid to run its course. Eventually vaccinated individuals will have break-through infections, gain the more durable natural immunity, and Covid will become a less serious, endemic virus more like the flu or cold.

In short, we don't yet have a need for a Delta variant vaccine. That may not be true eventually, especially for future variants.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#125

Post by reustle »

timonoko wrote: post #97
Ensorceled wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, what you described might just be a side effect of tick bite exposure ... https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/health/lyme-d...

Sounds true. I actually had one and only tick in 1955. It was on my testicles, so very embarrassing.

It's pretty hard to say that confidently with how small deer ticks are. I find them crawling on me all the time in Pennsylvania, and those are just the larger ones. Have found a few deer ticks on me over the years, and good luck finding them in your hair without someone else to look.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#126

Post by jmnicolas »

inglor_cz wrote: post #71
d4rkp4ttern wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we assume we are safe if we go hiking in a place where we never brushed against any plants or grass or twigs? In other words we went through woods but only stayed on wide open trails. I assume ticks don’t “fly” in the air ?

Ticks don't fly and they generally dislike sunlit or dry places. They will mostly lurk in darker, wetter places, up to 3 feet from the ground. So a shady tree patch with overgrown grass at the edge of a swamp or creek is much more likely to be thoroughly infested than other places. Use a repelent, wear some light-colored clothes to spot a crawling tick easily, tuck the (long!) trousers into your hiking shoes and you…

> Use a repelent

AFAIK permethrin is the only available repellent for ticks but please be aware that it provokes blindness in cats.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#127

Post by astura »

seren wrote: post #61

This is Phase 2, but I wonder how long Phase 3 will take, given that getting Lyme disease is still pretty rare, can easily be missed or misdiagnosed, it will takes a lot of time and people to get a significant effect between a control group and vaccinated people

Lyme disease is very common on the northeast coast of the United States nowadays. The disease is increasing every year due to a massive increase in deer and mice and is considered a major public health issue.

Since 14 states account for 95% of infections it might seem like a rare disease if you live outside of those 14 states.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#128

Post by _Microft »

novaRom wrote: post #115
_Microft wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's incorrect. They are vaccines even while working differently. The body develops immunity in reaction to the spike proteins that it produced itself after turning the mRNA instructions contained in the vaccine into proteins (namely the spike proteins that the SARS-Cov2 virus uses to enter cells). Ribosomes, tiny and amazing molecular machines, read this mRNA and produce the encoded sequence of aminoacids. With ev…

Amazing technology. What I cannot understand is how can a foreign mRNA be injected so efficiently into host's cells without all the virus-like methods to be applied? Why should host cells be ready to accept any mRNA from their environment so blindly? Wouldn't it be used by natural selection to create subviral agents which will destroy such naive host cells rather quickly?

The mRNA is hidden inside lipid nano-droplets. These droplets merge with cells and the mRNA gets released into them. From what I understand, pure mRNA would be broken down if it ended up in the interstitium (fluid filled space between cells) without being hidden inside this lipid shell. The sequence is also slightly altered compared to original one to make it more stable and less likely to produce an immune response (one of the bases ('U') is swapped out for one that is functionally the same but does not trigger the immune system).

You can read more about the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine and the lipid particles here:

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/11/rn...

mRNA is just instructions, it does not have to "authenticate" itself with the cell. If it is in there, it will be "executed". The filtering is done before stuff should get into cells (i.e. caught be the immune system).

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#129

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

darkerside wrote: post #99
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfounded claims from 100s of people developing imaginary autoimmune disorders? Mind you people are still getting compensated in court for autoimmune disorders arising from the Hep-B vaccine, even though no causal link was found. Just yesterday I had to accompany my sister to the phlebologist, because of severe side-effects from Pfizer, he told us he was seeing troves of patients for similar reasons even though offic…

What gives you so much confidence it was the vaccine? Correlation does not equal causation, as we all know around here.

I'm not confident one way or another. But I'm not ready to take this story at face value as a sad story of a vaccine being recalled because of a few loud-mouthed anti-science idiots just because "no causal-link was established by the FDA".

Health-policy and politics in general have a perverse effect on the science. What was the official stance of the government one day becomes misinformation the next, and vice-versa. I think it's important to recognize that going with the narrative of the government is a political stance rather than a scientific one and that it reflects trust in the system rather than anything else.

Over the years my government has given me many reasons not to trust it blindly when it comes to medical issues. Our legal system recognizes that finding a causal link is not the end-all be-all of medical responsiblity and my personal experience reflects it as well having just done a risk-benefit analysis to convince my sister to get vaccinated, using the information provided by the health-authorities of my country, and discovering afterward that some serious side-effects are not being reported.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#130

Post by ianhawes »

lampe3 wrote: post #73
ianhawes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest investment that Pfizer made was the creation of a way to reliably manufacture mRNA vaccines. Now they must recoup those investments.

Can you name any big company that does not work that way? Like Apple, Facebook, Ford, Tesla, Nestle ect ect. And what would be an alternative?

My understanding is that it has been known for years that mRNA is a viable vaccine delivery vector, but the R&D hadn't been completed for the other aspect of the business - production and safety at scale.
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