Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#111

Post by mcjkrw » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

tecleandor wrote: post #92

leksak wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And HPV

Doesn't HPV have already a (kind of expensive) vaccine? Some (girl)friends of mine have taken it at their own cost, of around usd$1000 (in Europe).

Yes there are, but it's only for the high risk sexually transmitted ones. There are some 100 strains of HPV, and there's no vaccine for the "common warts" you can get on hands, feet, knees. Although what's interesting is the getting a shot of a vaccine for STD HPV types can in some cases help body clear existing infection of common warts. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31369771/

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#112

Post by vletal » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

d0mine wrote: post #110

vletal wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facts? What does a shitty US health care system have to do with "corporations not developing cure for HIV to avoid losing profit" kind of theories.

Here's a reminder: I was answering this: "they've made HIV a chronic condition rather than a deadly disease, but I'd still like to see it eradicated with a vaccine." note: HIV, no cancer. There is an incentive to sell drugs for chronic conditions. Curing these conditions would cut into the profits for selling drugs for chronic conditions -- I hope it should be hard to misunderstood -- it is just a simple math (lifeti…

That's like monopolies, right? The ultra right argument is that they are harmless, because it's easy to disrupt them.

In practice that hardly works, due to nasty business practices and lobbying.

On the other hand this argument works better for scientific progress. Yes, company selling like insulin shots might not invest into curing diabetes. That does not mean that there is not plenty of researchers looking into that issue, potentially disrupting the market.

I just hate that this gets framed in a way that is just a step from conspiracy theories.

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#113

Post by jghn » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 11:52 PM UTC

Auracle wrote: post #108

jghn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, one would have to define "race" in genomic terms. Good luck to the person attempting to do that.

Is that really that hard? A $100 genetic test will tell you what race(s) you are.

Will it? Sure, you can predict from where your ancestors came, haplotype, etc.

But define race in a genomic sense. It's a feat that key genomic experts have not yet been able to accomplish. For instance: http://ewanbirney.com/2019/10/race-genetics-and-pseudoscienc...

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#114

Post by atleta » Wed, Mar 24, 2021, 3:30 PM UTC

landemva wrote: post #71

ineedasername wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a large proof of concept on the safe use of mRNA. Sure, any given implementation might be harmful, but this is (so far) showing that it is not in itself a harmful process. And there'll be mountains of cash poured into mRNA research now, so if cancer treatment is a viable path, there's a reasonable chance of some success here. But it won't be a cure-all. We use "cancer" as if it were a single disease, but it's re…

"proof of concept on the safe use of mRNA." Until about a year ago, potential treatments took 5-10 years of safety testing before general population use. This stuff takes time for things like antibody-dependent enhancement to be found. What we do know is those who are obese have bad outcomes to C19. I am not obese, got it a couple months ago, and recovered with just home rest. Now I test positive for the antibodies.

Nope. It has been explained several times that 5-10 years wasn't needed because that's how long the actual testing took. It was partly due to funding issues, partly due to administrative issues, etc. E.g. the review process has been accelerated for COVID through two measures: - phase 1 & 2 could be done at once. Which increased risks for only those who participated in phase 2, obviously - phase 3 was evaluated with a rolling review. I.e. the manufacturers didn't wait until phase 3 was over and submit their data then, but did it so continuously. And also FDA & EMA started to process those right away.

Then there is also the fact that when you don't have a pandemic (or even an epidemic) then it's hard to do a phase 3, because it will take a lot of time for enough people to get infected. Part of the reason the SARS1 vaccine was never finished (have never earned an authorization) is that it was over by the time the phase 3 would (or did) start. The same thing slowed down the ebola vaccine. The candidate was ready but then the outbreak vanished, so there was nowhere to do a phase 3.

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#115

Post by c6401 » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

sn_master wrote: post #64

rsyring wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. When the vaccine was first announced, I immediately thought of the movie.

Yeah, and the part about cancer in the article is almost identical to the movie's plot, where they used a measles vaccine to cure cancer. Edit: I am not anti-vaxxer, just talking about the movie.

IDK they used measles virus in the movie, but in mRNA they don't use virus at all. They just use lipid nanoparticle with mRNA, it can't replicate. It just delivers mRNA to cells and the mRNA is used by the cells as a boilerplate to manufacture some proteins. In case of SARS-COV-2 vaccine it's spike (s-protein), not the virus itself, not lipid particle protein RNA, just RNA for the spike alone. RNA is not stable, for our human proteins we constantly manufacture new RNA from DNA. So basically we send command to manufacture some spike proteins so that our immune system can learn to recognize and neutralize the spikes. The movie parallel is just on the surface but in reality it works differently. I'm not saying that you shouldn't start packing your zombie-apocalypse backpack though.