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Derek Lowe over at Science has a roundup of the status of current (article published 29 June 2020) Coronavirus vaccine trials/research.
This roundup of current vaccine research/trials includes information about many vaccine trials, broken down by vaccine types. These types include (quotes are all from TFA:
- Viral Vectors
This class uses some other infectious virus, but with its original genetic material removed. In its place goes genetic instructions to make coronavirus proteins, and when your infected cells do that, it will set off an immune response.
Number of trials (per TFA): 9
- Genetic Vaccines
These take DNA or RNA coding for coronavirus proteins and inject that directly into the bloodstream. "Directly" isn't quite the right word, though – for these things to work, they have to be formulated and modified to survive destruction in the blood, to be taken up through cell membranes, and to be used for protein production once they're inside.
Number of trials (per TFA): 8
- Recombinant protein vaccines
Here we get to a technique that really is used for human vaccines. The previous two categories force your own cells to make viral antigen proteins, but here you're making them industrially and just injecting them directly. The advantage can be that such protein production can be accomplished in many different ways and is already done on a large scale. That said, every new protein is a new project, with its own idiosyncrasies.
Number of trials (per TFA): 6
- Attenuated Virus Vaccines
This is another well-precedented vaccination technique. It involves producing a weakened form of the actual infectious virus, one that is not capable of causing damage but can still set off the immune system. There are several ways to do this, and it's a bit of an art form involving taking the virus through a huge number of replications in living cells as you select for variants that are less and less harmful.
Number of trials (per TFA): (None listed)
- Inactivated Virus Vaccines
This is also one that's also been used in medical practice for many years, and it's another inactivation step beyond the attenuated viruses. Heat or chemical agents are used to damage the virus to the point that it can no longer infect cells at all, but the plan is for there to be enough of the viral material left unaltered to still raise an immune response.
Number of trials (per TFA): 4
(Score: 5, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday July 04 2020, @11:38PM (1 child)
Again: I'm not a "joiner," and I've got only so much time and energy to point out when Someone Is Wrong On The Internet (TM). Like you pretty much always are. Besides which, I've largely kept quiet on HCQ because--and I know this is an entirely foreign concept to you--I HAVE A WORKING CONSCIENCE AND SET OF MEDICAL ETHICS.
Got that, you slavering, wild-eyed Opus Dei flunkie?! I don't want to be spreading ill-vetted, ill-tested information and potentially getting people killed. Things are moving very quickly and with limited oversight, and the entire field of immunomodulatory pharmacology is shaky and Protean at best--it's much, much worse when we don't actually know for sure what this fucking virus is doing. WHAT PARTS of the immune system is it suppressing, what parts is it kicking into overdrive, what are the knock-on effects, etc etc.
You don't know this, having never studied any of it, but there are dozens and dozens of different molecules, receptors, cell types, and biological feedback loops, positive and negative, involved in the immune response. Setting off one might upregulate three others, downregulate another, and as a result of that one being downregulated, put a damper on one of the first three but only after the concentrations of the aforementioned downregulated factor remain below X level for Y amount of time, etc etc etc.
Immunomodulatory drugs might only target one particular molecule, such as IL-6 as I mentioned below, or may, as HCQ does, broadly prevent a related family of immune responses from being activated. Their effectiveness may depend on where the patient is in the course of infection, on what his or her kidney/heart/lung/liver function is at any given time, and so on. An appropriate therapy for one patient may be deadly for another, or may turn deadly for the same patient if their vital signs or level of organ function changes.
In conclusion: shut the fuck up and let the grownups handle this.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday July 06 2020, @09:12PM
I could repeat verbatim my previous comment, anyway, going OT, I don't see why you should censor yourself since you have a domain knowledge. We are not all brainwashed socialists, so when we read something we tend not to consider it the ultimate truth, just your opinion.
Account abandoned.