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Lab-made virus infects cells, interacts with antibodies just like SARS-CoV-2:
Airborne and potentially deadly, the virus that causes COVID-19 can only be studied safely under high-level biosafety conditions. Scientists handling the infectious virus must wear full-body biohazard suits with pressurized respirators, and work inside laboratories with multiple containment levels and specialized ventilation systems. While necessary to protect laboratory workers, these safety precautions slow down efforts to find drugs and vaccines for COVID-19 since many scientists lack access to the required biosafety facilities.
To help remedy that, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a hybrid virus that will enable more scientists to enter the fight against the pandemic. The researchers genetically modified a mild virus by swapping one of its genes for one from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The resulting hybrid virus infects cells and is recognized by antibodies just like SARS-CoV-2, but can be handled under ordinary laboratory safety conditions.
The study is available online in Cell Host & Microbe.
I've never had this many requests for a scientific material in such a short period of time. We've distributed the virus to researchers in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Canada and, of course, all over the U.S. We have requests pending from the U.K. and Germany. Even before we published, people heard that we were working on this and started requesting the material."
Sean Whelan, PhD, co-senior author, the Marvin A. Brennecke Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Molecular Microbiology
[...] Since the hybrid virus looks like SARS-CoV-2 to the immune system but does not cause severe disease, it is a potential vaccine candidate, Diamond added. He, Whelan and colleagues are conducting animal studies to evaluate the possibility.
Journal Reference:
Case, J.B., et al. (2020) Neutralizing antibody and soluble ACE2 inhibition of a replication-competent VSV-SARS-CoV-2 and a clinical isolate of SARS-CoV-2. Cell Host & Microbe. doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2020.06.021.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @04:20PM (5 children)
This is science fiction and is probably a horrendous idea for the real world, but it is intriguing. What if we could create a virus like SARS-CoV-2 that was more transmissible than the current virus, would result in little to no symptoms, and would produce an immune response? Basically, we would create a virus that was much less dangerous but a more infectious version of SARS-CoV-2. People could be intentionally infected with the virus, receive immunity, but then spread it to others to create an immune response. Because it would be more infectious, the spread of the new strain of the virus would be faster than with SARS-CoV-2. And hopefully very few people would become ill or die. The eventual goal would be to slow or eradicate the spread of deadlier strains of the virus by building up immunity in the population to a much less dangerous strain.
It's similar to infecting people with a weakened form of a virus or bacteria in order to vaccinate them. However, in this case, the vaccine would be transmissible and people would go out and infect others with the vaccine.
Again, there are very real ethical concerns that make this a horrendous real world idea. But it's an idea I'd been thinking about and seemed like a somewhat related concept to the article.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Friday July 24 2020, @04:52PM
Isn't that how they solved things on 'The Last Ship'?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @05:15PM
Wasn't that the idea behind attenuated viruses?
The thing is there was a chance they could mutate back to a non-attenuated form.
but with genetic engineering perhaps we can figure out how to prevent that?
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday July 24 2020, @05:23PM
Intriguing idea. But I think we all know how that movie ends.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday July 24 2020, @08:16PM
Well, the live virus polio vaccine often does produce an infectious case. It's just that the version of polio that it infects people with is one the immune system can easily suppress. Or one could go back a lot further and consider the people who used to intentionally get cowpox to protect themselves from smallpox.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Friday July 24 2020, @09:34PM
That's called a vaccine. Its a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to have humans supervise the reproduction and transmission in controlled environments rather than your "let it go" concept, but yeah...
The other problem with your meme is the common conspiracy theory that AIDS was human created and intentionally released precisely to eliminate the disease of sexual perversion.