‘AeroNabs’ – Inhalable Protection Against Covid-19
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Re: ‘AeroNabs’ – Inhalable Protection Against Covid-19
#2Anyone know about potential human immune responses to these?
Re: ‘AeroNabs’ – Inhalable Protection Against Covid-19
#3Looks interesting but so far only talks about using it as prophylactic via inhalation; however the virus is known to enter via mouth, eyes and anus as well (breaks in skin probably). Even so inhalation and touching to mouth are likely the most common vectors of infection, so seems promising.
Re: ‘AeroNabs’ – Inhalable Protection Against Covid-19
#4Looks interesting but so far only talks about using it as prophylactic via inhalation; however the virus is known to enter via mouth, eyes and anus as well (breaks in skin probably). Even so inhalation and touching to mouth are likely the most common vectors of infection, so seems promising.
Yes but I think inhalation is the deadliest route. I could be wrong though.
Re: ‘AeroNabs’ – Inhalable Protection Against Covid-19
#5Looks interesting but so far only talks about using it as prophylactic via inhalation; however the virus is known to enter via mouth, eyes and anus as well (breaks in skin probably). Even so inhalation and touching to mouth are likely the most common vectors of infection, so seems promising.
It doesn’t have to be 100% effective for it to end the pandemic - it just has to be effective enough that it blocks most transmissions and gets the viruses reproduction rate under 1.
Re: ‘AeroNabs’ – Inhalable Protection Against Covid-19
#6“Llama inspired design” is quite amazing for being a conscious design choice. It does look like a llama, but is that a good thing?
Are llamas in the UX toolkit as an animal that is both semi-exotic yet familiar enough to elicit positive reactions.
I encountered a bunch on Peru trails and they were pretty ornery (compared to yaks or sheep) and the 30 or so different Quechua locals I talked with said they were pretty bad as pack animals. So they seemed pretty normal to me and not really some cool animal.
Re: ‘AeroNabs’ – Inhalable Protection Against Covid-19
#7Won't this take too long to run human trials on for safety/efficacy for it to really matter? My understanding is that a vaccine will likely come out within 6 months or so. They mention that it's an older compound, but sounds like they made some novel changes to it. Since this situation is so much a race against time, we are probably better off focusing on older, better-understood compounds that don't need to be tested for as long.
Re: ‘AeroNabs’ – Inhalable Protection Against Covid-19
#8Looks interesting but so far only talks about using it as prophylactic via inhalation; however the virus is known to enter via mouth, eyes and anus as well (breaks in skin probably). Even so inhalation and touching to mouth are likely the most common vectors of infection, so seems promising.
It isn't the same thing (I hope!) but it reminds me of McIntyre Powder. Miners were told by their company to use a fine aluminum/aluminium dust they breathed in before going to work in a mine.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31532354/
"McIntyre Powder (MP) is a finely ground aluminum powder that was used between 1943 and 1979 as a prophylaxis for silicosis. Silicosis is a chronic lung disease caused by the inhalation of crystalline silica dust and was prevalent in the Canadian mining industry during this time period."
Re: ‘AeroNabs’ – Inhalable Protection Against Covid-19
#9It's really annoying that press releases tend to overhype research so much. As far as I understand from skimming the paper, they created a synthetic antibody against the Spike protein of SARS-CoV2 that binds very tightly.
There is no clinical data in the paper, they measured how tightly the nanobody they designed binds to the Spike protein and they did some neutralization assays against SARS-CoV2.
The advantages of the nanobodies compared to full antibodies sound interesting, for sure. But this is still a paper pretty solidly in the basic research area, and quite far from clinical use.
I found an article about this research that puts it into a bit more context:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/11/scientists-create-potent...
> While the lab results look promising, experts in the field advise caution because important work has not been done to test the compound in animals. “The critical thing is animal data. We’ve found things that are very potent in vitro that do nothing in vivo,” said Dimiter Stanchev Dimitrov, a professor of medicine who directs the Center for Antibody Therapeutics at the University of Pittsburgh and has created antibody-based therapeutics for numerous viruses including SARS and MERS, two other coronaviruses. He said it can take months to collect the needed data in animals. “Once these are tested in animal models, then I can get excited.”
Re: ‘AeroNabs’ – Inhalable Protection Against Covid-19
#10Won't this take too long to run human trials on for safety/efficacy for it to really matter? My understanding is that a vaccine will likely come out within 6 months or so. They mention that it's an older compound, but sounds like they made some novel changes to it. Since this situation is so much a race against time, we are probably better off focusing on older, better-understood compounds that don't need to be teste…
A great vaccine still won't work for everyone. The biggest group being those whose immune systems are not functioning well, which depending on the vaccine could include a large chunk of the elderly most at risk.