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

fiercebiotech.com

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

#61

Post by KraftKacke »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #5
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…

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.

No. The cash helped develop a vaccine this fast, but further application comes with the recent innovation in the lipid nano particles for delivery. That was done before the pandemic.

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

#62

Post by ghc »

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. BioNTech are already into phase 1s and phase 2s with several others. My wife works on one of the programs targeting cancer, which has years of development and trials behind it.

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

#63

Post by ghc »

tcbawo wrote: post #34

Does anyone know if this approach would work for food allergies?

According to my wife, who is an immunologist working on this same mRNA tech, but applied to cancer, it also has promise in treating allergies -- both the food kind and the kind I have (animals).

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

#64

Post by waiseristy »

dr_faustus wrote: post #48
usrusr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You think the mRNA vaccines with minimal changes be treated similarly? e.g one years flu cocktail, vs the next?

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

#65

Post by okr »

ghc wrote: post #62
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. BioNTech are already into phase 1s and phase 2s with several others. My wife works on one of the programs targeting cancer, which has years of development and trials behind it.

Good luck. A relative of mine also goes through immune therapy instead of chemo.

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

#67

Post by pstrateman »

pstrateman wrote: post #9
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?

Pretty screwed for at least another year.

I appear to have angered the.... I actually don't know.

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

#68

Post by alfl »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #57
usrusr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>I believe that it's considerably worse than 1918. The COVID IFR is known to be lower than that of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed between 50 and 100 million people in less than a year, and pulled that off at a time when the Earth's population was a quarter of what it is today and much less mobile. I have no idea whatsoever where you get the idea that COVID is worse than 1918. It most emphatically (at least…

OP was talking about the “quality of death” being subjectively worse IMO.

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

#69

Post by Zhenya »

djbebs wrote: post #35
pkaye wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't insurance companies love a lower cost one time treatment?

Doubtful. Insurances dont run at a loss, every penny that goes into them they take a cut as profits. If the treatment is expensive, great! More demand for their product, and even if their cut is the same, their profit and revenue will be greater.

This doesn't make sense to me. Insurance in a collective risk pooling scheme. How do they take a cut when they are the ones paying out?

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

#70

Post by usehackernews »

syntaxing wrote: post #36

I really hope this mRNA train keeps going and companies succeed executing on it. Does anyone know the status for CRISPR medical technology? I remembering hearing about all these great applications using CaaS-9 and 13 but I haven’t really heard any new medical breakthroughs recently (though the hemophilia “cure” was awesome!).

CRISPR is a great example of a technology that has not yet made a meaningful economic contribution. Although the technique for editing DNA was discovered in 2012—and a Nobel Prize was awarded to its two discoverers this year—no treatment using CRISPR has been approved outside of clinical trials. So far, its impact has been limited to making researchers more productive—not a bad thing, to be sure, but not close to CRISPR’s full potential. As trials progress, however, I do think some CRISPR treatments will come online in the next few years, especially those targeting genetic disorders that we have very limited means of otherwise treating.

From Notes on Technology in the 2020s - Eli Dourado

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