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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @02:39PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @02:39PM (#1016118)

    so much news is about vaccins and existing medication that might help.
    but can anyone shed some light (or even a floodlight?) on the testing?
    i mean, we assume this bug to be totally new, like a case of "evolution hard at work" or a golden show case of how darwinism works.
    thus being totally new and not old but just ignored, how do we go about making a test and more importantly CONFIRMING IT TO BE THE BEST TEST (triple A gold standard)
    "this dude has covid!"
    "how do you know?"
    "i tested him."
    "how do you know the test works?"
    "we tested it on a covid patient."
    "right, but how do you know the dude you tested the test on had covid?"
    ...
    for the paranoid, the story continues:
    "well, the mostly working test batches for february went to italy. for march, they went to spain and after that they sent themnto the usa ..."

    thus, maybe ANYTHING can be confirmed if need be ...

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @03:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @03:33PM (#1016140)

    Look up (RT-)PCR, anitbody test, and antibody test, then you won't be such an ignorant "contrarian."

    At the least, you would be able to ask better thought-out questions.