111–120 of 197 posts
mRNA seems almost like a biological programming language; if you can determine how to build a protein that triggers the body's immune system to attack something you want to destroy it's just a matter of design and testing. I wonder if you could build a real language that you could use to design a sequence and automate the testing.
What can companies do to ease the public's worry about mRNA vaccines? I work with a number of people who will not get an mRNA vaccine until they are better understood.
hair loss?
I know it’s maybe pure vanity and I definitely wish to see cancer cured first but I think the psychological impact of hair loss, especially in young people (<25), is often underestimated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems they could pre-make vaccines for all 131 extant types and then mix the flu shots based on the current season. Though, likely that wouldn’t be economical. It does raise the question of why they couldn’t just put a bit of all 131 subtypes in the vaccine. Or if that’d overload the immune system, say, the X subtypes most likely to makeup say 99% of probable flu season strains.
They could - but up until recently no one cared enough, both for R&D spend and to get or mandate enough shots for it to work at it’s stated goals. We’ve had people even recently refusing to give their kids polio, tetanus, or measles vaccines - and even 5 minutes of honest research or questions to a doctor will make quite clear how bad an idea THAT is. Getting 100+ flu vaccines, all which would have to go through a pi…
Moderna has a public development pipeline. It shows they are working on, among other things, an HIV vaccine and vaccines/therapies for multiple types of cancer. https://www.modernatx.com/pipeline
HIV is a known virus for many decades. Now that mRNA was released in a rush, why would it suddenly cure HIV?
Greenlight Biosciences (one of our portfolio companies) is using RNA as a highly targeted-species-specific pesticide.
This honestly is highly concerning - if that can be done for species, the next step could be to target ethnicity. I feel like this is one of those Oppenheimeresque moments in human history.
Moderna has a public development pipeline. It shows they are working on, among other things, an HIV vaccine and vaccines/therapies for multiple types of cancer. https://www.modernatx.com/pipeline
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They could - but up until recently no one cared enough, both for R&D spend and to get or mandate enough shots for it to work at it’s stated goals. We’ve had people even recently refusing to give their kids polio, tetanus, or measles vaccines - and even 5 minutes of honest research or questions to a doctor will make quite clear how bad an idea THAT is. Getting 100+ flu vaccines, all which would have to go through a pi…
There’s got to be a large market for that given the entire elderly population is offered a flu shot every year. Doing that as a one off would be a huge cost saving.
$20 (likely current retail cost of a flu shot) x the 46 million older adults in the US is a hair less than a billion a year. Making 131 or so effective flu vaccines and getting them through the process with the prior known and effective process? (including all the failed attempts)
Hopefully we’d get some economies of scale, estimates [https://www.passporthealthusa.com/2018/02/how-much-does-it-c...] I found had it between 500m to 2.5billion and a decade each. So 65billion to 327billion.
So between 65 to 327 years for positive ROI if that was your metric.
If you’re talking public good, it would be immeasurable for us and the world though, no question, and on the high end that’s less than a third [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-473918...] of what we’ve spent in Afghanistan alone.
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This is not new at all. They tried to use mRNA vaccines for other diseases as well, but were never approved. This still holds true to this date. edit: An example would be Dengvaxia.
It seems that Dengvaxia is a live attenuated vaccine, what is the relationship with mRNA vaccine?
Zika: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04064905
Influenza: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31079849/
Moderna has a public development pipeline. It shows they are working on, among other things, an HIV vaccine and vaccines/therapies for multiple types of cancer. https://www.modernatx.com/pipeline
brings an odd question, will we have to have artifical exposure to diseases just to ensure our immune system is capable ?