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German company CureVac has received a rather strange offer from the current White House.
On March 3, CureVac's CEO was invited to the White House, for a meeting with President Trump, Vice Pence and several members of the Coronavirus Task Force. Asked for when a vaccine could be ready, he estimated that a potential candidate could be ready within a few months. Apparently, that triggered the members of the meeting so much, that they've now offered to buy the company, at whatever price.
One condition though: production would be exclusively for the United States.
The move is not exactly one to gain popularity, and follows on the heels of the President's worrying statement that "a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe".
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Monday March 16 2020, @02:57AM (2 children)
Coronavirus vaccines have proven difficult in the past. From what I've heard, human trials of existing efforts have been a mixed bag -- some protection, some worse-than-no-protection (people lose all immunity and get sicker than before), so you really want to get this one right before dosing the public en masse.
Condensed version of one whose history I'm familiar with: Back in the 1980s, Cornell University developed a modified live vaccine for canine coronavirus (at the time significant because tho canine corona is merely a nuisance in young puppies, it acts as a gateway for parvovirus, then with a 90% mortality rate and not very good vaccine). Unfortunately they gave the rights to a company that a few years later went under due to business incompetence, and the vaccine disappeared from the market; attempts to recreate it failed. Since then a killed vaccine has been developed, but the efficacy is so-so (fortunately we now have very good parvo vaccine, so corona vaccine for dogs is kinda irrelevant).
BTW bad vaccine being worse than no vaccine is not unknown; it can happen with canine distemper (this is why you don't use stale vaccine, or half-dose it -- it can set the immune system to a state where it can't generate antibodies to the real thing).
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And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @04:08AM (1 child)
"it can set the immune system to a state where it can't generate antibodies to the real thing"
Are there any citations to this?
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Monday March 16 2020, @05:02AM
I linked to an interview below where this is discussed. It's called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement [wikipedia.org]
Osterholm mentioned ADE caused a recall for dengue fever vaccine recently. Anyway, here's an article entitled "Too much or too little—better than some". Honestly it is beyond me, but here's a link: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6365/929.full [sciencemag.org]
This appears to be the specific dengue fever vaccine recalled because of the ADE effect: http://www.virology.ws/2017/12/07/a-problem-with-dengue-virus-vaccine/ [virology.ws]