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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday July 04 2020, @01:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the sign-of-the-times dept.

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


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Bot on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:01AM (5 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:01AM (#1016031) Journal

    It takes a lot of hypocrisy to point the finger towards who politicizes this treatment FOR THE SECOND TIME.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:50PM (4 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:50PM (#1016212) Journal

    So you didn't notice that I was never one of the "orange man bad, orange man liked HCQ, therefore HCQ doesn't work" crowd? Boy, I have *forgotten* more about organic chemistry and pharmacology than your entire worthless clan has ever *learned.* And according to my diploma I'm a geologist!

    Around early March, it occurred to me that nCov-2019 is not a "respiratory virus" per se, and I was speculating with my boss that it is likely provoking systemic, lopsided inflammation...and that HCQ might have some useful effects by bringing down the body's inflammatory response. Reports of spontaneous thromboses, DVT, pulmonary embolisms, and seemingly random, mysterious multi-organ damage bear this out, as does the ongoing investigation of interleukin-6 (IL-6) inhibitors in the inpatient therapeutic milieu. Were I a pharmacist in an inpatient setting I'd be taking D-dimer tests from any suspected Covid-19 admission and recommending LMWH in elevated cases (so long as they had the kidney function to handle it).

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    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Bot on Saturday July 04 2020, @09:39PM (3 children)

      by Bot (3902) on Saturday July 04 2020, @09:39PM (#1016263) Journal

      >So you didn't notice that I was never one of the "orange man bad, orange man liked HCQ, therefore HCQ doesn't work" crowd?
      Which is not relevant to what I wrote. I notice, that you speak about politicization of that treatment now, while it happened earlier and from your side.
      Maybe you did speak out earlier then I'd be wrong.

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      • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @10:59PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @10:59PM (#1016287)

        This is going to be hard from your Trump brain to take in, but the backlash was against his recommendations for unproven treatments with serious side effects, while at the same time saying the virus was a hoax.

        I guess baseless accusations are perfectly fine from your side but measured criticism is literally white genocide. My favorite part is the hypocrisy and stupidity as some elite twats convince you that goose stepping is totally fine and liberals are only pissed about it because they hate yer freedums.

        Fucking idiots

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday July 04 2020, @11:38PM (1 child)

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday July 04 2020, @11:38PM (#1016314) Journal

        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.

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        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 2) by Bot on Monday July 06 2020, @09:12PM

          by Bot (3902) on Monday July 06 2020, @09:12PM (#1017320) Journal

          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.

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