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New antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants in lab tests

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Re: New antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants in lab tests

#151

Post by headsoup »

Mindwipe wrote: post #147
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments should not just fund drug and vaccine research. They should employ most of the researchers and own most of the labs. Problem solved. Give a hundred billion to vaccine research and then release it to the public with a mandated price - job complete.

> Governments should not just fund drug and vaccine research. They should employ most of the researchers and own most of the labs. Problem solved. Give a hundred billion to vaccine research and then release it to the public with a mandated price - job complete. That seems... a spectacularly naïve idea. Governments could have done this for fifty years, but by and large they don't, because governments are generally cap…

Actually governments used to do this. Universities being free and all. Yes companies can sell and distribute the products, but the government/universities retain the IP/patents.

Re: New antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants in lab tests

#152

Post by headsoup »

peyton wrote: post #119
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically I’m saying they should make a finished solution but leave distribution and full scale manufacturing to private industry. Not because private will do that part better, but because at that point there’s not much need to use taxes to finish the job. What drug manufacturer wouldn’t want the contract to exclusively sell an already developed product? All they need to do is follow FDA regulations and pricing.

“Making a finished solution” is the really, really expensive part. How does the government allocate limited resources in your model?

What's a good reference for this? I see it said a lot but are there a few good case studies around to explain it out?

Re: New antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants in lab tests

#153

Post by ChadNauseam »

hkt wrote: post #67
ChuckMcM wrote: post #26

From the article: The researchers have applied for patents on both the antibodies and the mouse model used to produce them. They hope to see their work developed commercially. ... followed by This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (INV-021989), the National institutes of Health (NIAID Consortia for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development UM1-AI144371, P01 AI158571, Ma…

I've always been confused about the arbitrary lengths of patents. Surely for something like this, six months or a year is fine? Enough time to get to market and make a considerable size of buck, but brief enough that a much needed thing that is subsidised by public money can be used as widely as possible. (Remember, philanthropic funds are often treated favourably for tax, so are, in a way, also public-ish money) On…

Drug patents have 20 years from the time of invention, but getting FDA approval takes 10 years after invention so that really only leaves you with a 10 year monopoly.

I think people are under the impression that the government is giving like 75% of the funding for drug development. It’s more like 1%. Getting FDA approval is a very arduous and expensive process. If you want to build an insulin factory, you’re looking at 8-10 years and $100 million to prove to the government that your insulin is safe to use. [1] That’s just for making generic insulin. Developing a new drug from scratch and getting it approved is orders of magnitude harder. A 6 month monopoly wouldn’t be close enough to recoup your costs.

[1]: https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/forefront.20190405....

Re: New antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants in lab tests

#154

Post by feet »

peyton wrote: post #124
coldtea wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those are any good and not snake-oil crap?

The FDA publishes withdrawal notices in the Federal Register [1]. The withdrawal rate for reasons of effectiveness is something like ~1/yr. [1]: https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies/food-and-drug-admin...

Withdrawal notices are only related to active harm and not efficacy AFAIK

We could have many compounds out there that don't do anything for their intended target but aren't actively harmful

Re: New antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants in lab tests

#155

Post by radus »

refurb wrote: post #137
ChuckMcM wrote: post #26

From the article: The researchers have applied for patents on both the antibodies and the mouse model used to produce them. They hope to see their work developed commercially. ... followed by This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (INV-021989), the National institutes of Health (NIAID Consortia for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development UM1-AI144371, P01 AI158571, Ma…

You realize it take tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to get from this stage to an actual product and the chances of failure are 90%+? And you're mad because when the government funded 0.01% of the total cost of development you can't get it for free?

More even, billions+

Re: New antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants in lab tests

#156

Post by throwaway2037 »

nyokodo wrote: post #78
ChuckMcM wrote: post #26

From the article: The researchers have applied for patents on both the antibodies and the mouse model used to produce them. They hope to see their work developed commercially. ... followed by This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (INV-021989), the National institutes of Health (NIAID Consortia for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development UM1-AI144371, P01 AI158571, Ma…

> a lifetime perpetual non-exclusive right to use and re-license said patent on what ever terms they deem acceptable. Probably the biggest immediate positive impact would be automatically securing the rights to produce and distribute the patented good in developing nations. BigCo isn’t making much money there anyway.

You wrote: >.

Real question for you and others: Where do we draw the line? That is an enormously complex question!

I have an equivalent to discuss: During the COVID-19 crisis, I was bothered that the South Africa gov't was pushing so hard to get access to produce vaccines locally without paying patent licensing costs. (Without very advanced pharma manuf facils, it would be useless. Many people under estimate the complexity of producing these new mRNA vaccines, let alone distributing them safely and correctly.) South Africa is, by many measures, a middle income economy. They could absolutely affort 10-20 USD per citizen to vaccinate their population -- not so different than what EU paid for vaccines. Please do not interpret this post as "dumping on SA"!. I just want to discuss a very specific example.

Related: The Serum Institute of India (which I think is the world's largest producer by vaccine doses) eventually secured a licenses to produce and sell vaccines. (Wiki tells me three were licensed [very impressive!]: AstraZeneca/Oxford, Novavax, and Russia's Gamaleya Sputnik V.) Does anyone know the details of SI's licensing agreements?

Re: New antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants in lab tests

#157

Post by throwaway2037 »

vletal wrote: post #85
nyokodo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lifetime perpetual non-exclusive right to use and re-license said patent on what ever terms they deem acceptable. Probably the biggest immediate positive impact would be automatically securing the rights to produce and distribute the patented good in developing nations. BigCo isn’t making much money there anyway.

Economy of scale. You make little from a large population. Or you can go Nestle level evil and straight out exploit the most in need [1]. Plenty of ways for BigCo to make money of developing nations. [1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/The_Nestlé_Inf...

Agree. See also: Suez Environnement

Re: New antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants in lab tests

#158

Post by whoomp12342 »

scatters wrote: post #130
ChuckMcM wrote: post #26

From the article: The researchers have applied for patents on both the antibodies and the mouse model used to produce them. They hope to see their work developed commercially. ... followed by This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (INV-021989), the National institutes of Health (NIAID Consortia for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development UM1-AI144371, P01 AI158571, Ma…

This is an antibody, not a vaccine. It's for treating a single infection, not for conferring immunity.

how likely is it that this leads to some type of universal vaccine?

Re: New antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants in lab tests

#159

Post by throwawaymaths »

whoomp12342 wrote: post #158
scatters wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an antibody, not a vaccine. It's for treating a single infection, not for conferring immunity.

how likely is it that this leads to some type of universal vaccine?

Not saying it's impossible, but I've never heard of it happening in that direction[0]. The immune system uses natural selection to randomly generate and amplify successful antibodies. It seems that the likelihood of generating exactly that antibody in the immunization process is astronomically low.

[0] unless the lab-gnerated antibody is "seeing" a different part of the virus that the current vaccine doesn't see, in which case targeting the new spot in the virus is an obvious "next move".

Re: New antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants in lab tests

#160

Post by throwaway2037 »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #97
peyton wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? What’s the incentive for Pfizer to fund development if they don’t get exclusivity?

Governments should not just fund drug and vaccine research. They should employ most of the researchers and own most of the labs. Problem solved. Give a hundred billion to vaccine research and then release it to the public with a mandated price - job complete.

One of the most interesting ideas I saw during the COVID-19 crisis about the balance of pharam research and distribution of new vaccines: What if the gov't guaranteed a price-per-vaccine and number of vaccines to be purchased if a new vaccine could be created? This is basically the scheme of Operation Warp Speed. The US gov't dumped tons of money into a few great ideas, then guaranteed to buy if they were approved by FDA. It stimulated massive parallel investment and created a few new vaccines in the shortest time in human history.
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