Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BioNTech CEO applies Covid-19 vaccine's mRNA tech to multiple sclerosis

fiercebiotech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 75 posts

Re: BioNTech CEO applies Covid-19 vaccine's mRNA tech to multiple sclerosis

#41

Post by aledalgrande »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #20
BitwiseFool wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't feel too bad, the execution depended on a massive world-changing pandemic where funding flowed freely and normal economics just didn't apply.

They were working on applying mRNA technology to other diseases, including (and in particular) cancer, well before the pandemic. While it is true that they have received significant funding this year, they had a $7.6B market cap on Dec 31, 2019 and were already conducting several clinical studies for mRNA-based medicine [1]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200128054759/https://biontech....

Moderna is too.

Re: BioNTech CEO applies Covid-19 vaccine's mRNA tech to multiple sclerosis

#42

Post by usrusr »

pg_bot wrote: post #24
waiseristy wrote: post #16

I haven't yet seen anyone mention this, but will BioNTech's / Modernas mRNA vaccine need to go through phase 1-3 trials when encoding for other proteins? The greatest advancement with mRNA is that you can have a vaccine in under a month. But that doesn't help if for each new mRNA encoding you need 9 months worth of health & safety trials.

Yes, they will have to go through health and safety trials for each additional vaccine developed using this technology. No one gets special treatment when it comes to FDA approval, and this is the way it should be. You can get fast tracked if you show superior effectiveness, meet an unmet medical need, or get rid of serious side effects of an existing therapy. We should look at ways to speed up this process, (in the…

How are the flu vaccines doing this? Nature forces them to have an update cycle reminiscent of the fashion industry.

Re: BioNTech CEO applies Covid-19 vaccine's mRNA tech to multiple sclerosis

#43

Post by d33lio »

Big Pharma is likely very pro covid vaccine boon, 1) because some got a free loan to fund improvements of their own MRNA tech to catch up to Moderna's 10 year head start and 2) as an excuse to now field their MRNA tech with new vaccines and therapies when in prior years there would have been insurmountable barriers due to the FDA and lack of existing pharmacological precedent.

Re: BioNTech CEO applies Covid-19 vaccine's mRNA tech to multiple sclerosis

#44

Post by usrusr »

liquidify wrote: post #12

Headline is a bit funky calling it "Covid-19 vaccine's tech", since this tech has been studied and tested for many other applications. It seems backwards... Covid-19 vaccine is an instance of this technology, the technology is not a derivative of what they did in Covid-19 vaccine.

Well, Covid is what made the technologies breach the apply to humans threshold. Could have taken ages otherwise, because the testing procedures create quite a bit of conservative bias (and I don't blame them)

Re: BioNTech CEO applies Covid-19 vaccine's mRNA tech to multiple sclerosis

#45

Post by jghn »

spchampion2 wrote: post #10
klmadfejno wrote: post #6

Can anyone comment on where we would be if COVID-19 hit a few years earlier and mRNA wasn't ready for primetime?

Using a vaccine created by one of the many other mechanisms that are in the pipeline, like the Oxford or J&J vaccines. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus...

But if this happened 20 years ago it'd have been before SARS, and thus we would also not have the head start provided by all of that research

Re: BioNTech CEO applies Covid-19 vaccine's mRNA tech to multiple sclerosis

#46

Post by pg_bot »

usrusr wrote: post #42
pg_bot wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they will have to go through health and safety trials for each additional vaccine developed using this technology. No one gets special treatment when it comes to FDA approval, and this is the way it should be. You can get fast tracked if you show superior effectiveness, meet an unmet medical need, or get rid of serious side effects of an existing therapy. We should look at ways to speed up this process, (in the…

How are the flu vaccines doing this? Nature forces them to have an update cycle reminiscent of the fashion industry.

Planning, prediction, and coordination.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-selection.htm#:~:tex....

Re: BioNTech CEO applies Covid-19 vaccine's mRNA tech to multiple sclerosis

#47

Post by Guthur »

usrusr wrote: post #40
klmadfejno wrote: post #6

Can anyone comment on where we would be if COVID-19 hit a few years earlier and mRNA wasn't ready for primetime?

If this hit 20 years ago I suspect that we wouldn't have perceived anything but the tip of the iceberg of people who actually die or get close, because PCR was much less industrialized back then. And the big invisible "underwater part" of young or lucky people who don't get bad Covid but still serve the virus as transmitter relays would have made it a very strong, short wave. Likely mass graves in every part of the w…

It's not luck, Covid is likely as bad as it is because we're so terrible overweight and unhealthy.

There is evidence that obesity and other lifestyle are making Covid-19 worse than it could have been.

But we'll ignore and just enable a continuely growing health problem of obesity.

https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/151/1/9/5981716

Re: BioNTech CEO applies Covid-19 vaccine's mRNA tech to multiple sclerosis

#48

Post by dr_faustus »

usrusr wrote: post #42
pg_bot wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they will have to go through health and safety trials for each additional vaccine developed using this technology. No one gets special treatment when it comes to FDA approval, and this is the way it should be. You can get fast tracked if you show superior effectiveness, meet an unmet medical need, or get rid of serious side effects of an existing therapy. We should look at ways to speed up this process, (in the…

How are the flu vaccines doing this? Nature forces them to have an update cycle reminiscent of the fashion industry.

The have to go through an approval process on every update but AFAICR only with a study including 300 adults, so substantially less then the tens of thousands that were included in the Biontec/Moderna trails.

Re: BioNTech CEO applies Covid-19 vaccine's mRNA tech to multiple sclerosis

#49

Post by refurb »

wittyreference wrote: post #2

I came up with the same idea for treating autoimmune disease years ago - in my first year of med school, actually. Back then the platform for doing this elegantly via mRNA didn't really exist, though, and I didn't want to drop out of med school to spend a half-decade or more in grad school proving the concept the clumsy way. I'm really glad that it's finally come to fruition, but I definitely feel a bit of regret tha…

We don’t even know if this will work so I wouldn’t feel too bad.

Re: BioNTech CEO applies Covid-19 vaccine's mRNA tech to multiple sclerosis

#50

Post by refurb »

belltaco wrote: post #38
WillPostForFood wrote: post #7

Great news! I wonder how much industry resistance there will be. Treating MS patients is a massive industry. Drug treatments are $100k a year currently, replacing that with a single $20 vaccine would be disruptive in the best way.

Where does it say it'd be only $20 ?

Indeed. It most certainly won’t be $20. If it permanently “cured” someone of MS they could charge hundreds of thousands and insurance companies would gladly pay it.
Post reply on HN