Researchers have developed a vaccine that may be effective at preventing many forms of the common cold (rhinovirus):
A mixture of 25 types of inactivated rhinovirus can stimulate neutralizing antibodies against all 25 in mice, and a mixture of 50 types can do the same thing in rhesus macaques. In this paper, antibodies generated in response to the vaccine were tested for their ability to prevent the virus from infecting human cells in culture. However, the vaccines were not tested for their ability to stop animals from getting sick.
"There are no good animal models of rhinovirus replication," Moore says. "The next step would be human challenge models with volunteers, which are feasible because the virus is not very pathogenic."
Emory has optioned the vaccine technology to a startup company, Meissa Vaccines, Inc., which is pursuing a product development plan with support from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' vaccine manufacturing services.
A polyvalent inactivated rhinovirus vaccine is broadly immunogenic in rhesus macaques (open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12838) (DX)
As the predominant aetiological agent of the common cold, human rhinovirus (HRV) is the leading cause of human infectious disease. Early studies showed that a monovalent formalin-inactivated HRV vaccine can be protective, and virus-neutralizing antibodies (nAb) correlated with protection. However, co-circulation of many HRV types discouraged further vaccine efforts. Here, we test the hypothesis that increasing virus input titres in polyvalent inactivated HRV vaccine may result in broad nAb responses. We show that serum nAb against many rhinovirus types can be induced by polyvalent, inactivated HRVs plus alhydrogel (alum) adjuvant. Using formulations up to 25-valent in mice and 50-valent in rhesus macaques, HRV vaccine immunogenicity was related to sufficient quantity of input antigens, and valency was not a major factor for potency or breadth of the response. Thus, we have generated a vaccine capable of inducing nAb responses to numerous and diverse HRV types.
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Drug target for curing the common cold
UK scientists believe they may have found a way to combat the common cold.
Rather than attacking the virus itself, which comes in hundreds of versions, the treatment targets the human host. It blocks a key protein in the body's cells that cold viruses normally hijack to self-replicate and spread. This should stop any cold virus in its tracks if given early enough, lab studies suggest [DOI: 10.1038/s41557-018-0039-2] [DX]. Safety trials in people could start within two years.
The Imperial College London researchers are working on making a form of the drug that can be inhaled, to reduce the chance of side-effects. In the lab, it worked within minutes of being applied to human lung cells, targeting a human protein called NMT, Nature Chemistry journal reports.
Related: Vaccine Against the Common Cold may be Achievable
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Tuesday September 27 2016, @04:46AM
I still wonder whether the common cold and humans have coadapted with benefits gained on both sides..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @01:03PM
I still wonder whether the common cold and humans have coadapted with benefits gained on both sides..
My theory is that there are many pathogens which linger in our bodies that fall beneath our immune system's radar. The little cold virus gets into all the places where these unnoticed pathogens hang out and throws a loud party calling the attention of the immune system which goes there and flushes everything (usually with a lot of snot) clean, cold viruses and previously unnoticed pathogens included.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:08AM
It was invented by scientists, not a mom* or schoolteacher!
* some scientists may also be moms
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:39AM
It was invented by scientists, not a mom* or schoolteacher!
The dead giveaway is that it does not cause autism, contain gluten, or vote for Trump. Scientists! What do they know, since the Latin root, "scio", is the verb "to know".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:36PM
yeah, that's real funny with people's kids brains being destroyed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:37AM
it's what for dinner.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday September 27 2016, @07:40AM
Curing the common cold is both incredibly unlikely (there are many more types than even 50 and each would need an inactivated rhinovirus in the vaccine, plus any of their variants, plus any mutations that may occur when you start vaccinating - and the reason there are so many types is pretty much because they all mutated from others!) and quite stupid.
A cold doesn't injure you. It doesn't destroy your ability to survive. It doesn't even hinder daily life past a tissue and a pause to sneeze. Yet it generates billions in "remedies" that do nothing. It's almost a gullibility tax. And, though that money could be going anywhere, pretty much it ends up in the pharmaceutical industry and doing something actually USEFUL rather than stopping your sniffles briefly and no better than a bit of hot water and anything particularly smelly.
All you're going to do is shift the cold to worse variants, and lose a lot of easy money.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday September 27 2016, @07:51AM
A cold impairs your ability to be a perfectly efficient work-producing unit and gets you further up the firing line when the share price needs to be increased.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday September 27 2016, @08:37AM
Why not just approach it in a way similar to how we deal with the flu. Pick 3-5* strains each year and vaccinate for those (heck, make it compatible with the flushots and do both as a combined dose - might get more people to get vaccinated against the flu), even of we only knock down some 10% of symptoms in a given year it will probably be worth it.
* = with the cold this could probably be quite a bit higher.
And yeah, it will cause both worse and milder strains to be more common so some emphasis must be placed on identifying the worse strains and knock them out (and maybe also spare some of the weaker strains)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @01:32PM
What bullshit. The flu vaccine is a total con. So is this cold vaccine. In my experience the people who get vaccinated still get sick every year, usually earlier and longer. They are the same ones who buy a lot of medicines which questionably treat symptoms but definitely have a lot of unpleasant side effects and will accept antibiotics when everybody knows the flu (or cold) is a viral infection unaffected by said antibiotics. These people are just marks for the medical industry who would enjoy better health if they were to stop being so trusting.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 27 2016, @03:44PM
The ONE and only time I got the flu shot, I felt like CRAP all winter long. Since then, I've been pretty good.
Soooooo..... either that one flu shot cured me or my immune system doesn't need it.
All I ever hear about is the people who get the flu shot get terribly sick, and 'they' say "we chose the wrong bug to cure". Vitamins are supposed to be bunko, but I seem to do better with them then with the flu shot.
Meh, whatever.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Post-Nihilist on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:04PM
My father used to work at an hospital and the flu shot seemed to protect him and the other workers quite effectively about 4y/5y, yet the older folks he draw blood from (he was a lab technician and the best srynge operator on the block ) , seemed to be immune to the vaccine. Maybe you have to have a healthy immune system for the cold vaccine to be effective and the people in the general population (those were it is not mandatory) who tend to get vaccinated have a weaker immune system to begin with...
Be like us, be different, be a nihilist!!!
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday September 28 2016, @07:59AM
50-80% effective if you're young and healthy, at most 50% if you are elderly (just checked my country's NHS info pages). That is of couse assuming you got vaccinated fir the right strains.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday September 28 2016, @07:53AM
Let me point out a few things here..
1) flu-vaccines are only 50-80% effective if you are healthy (and less so if you're not)
2) flu-vaccines are strain-specific - the cocktail you get only protects against 3-5 strains out of the 30 or so that emerge every year.
2b) it takes a couple of months (weeks in emergencies) to ramp up production - so they have to gamble on which three strains they need to target before they become pandemic
3) it is different strains constantly - so any shot you got more than nine months ago will not help you against what the lastest unvaccinated schmuck brought home from its travels
4) you will get sick from the vaccine (it is the idea of it; but only weakly so, and only for 2-3 days and (most important) won't be contagious)
5) The people who buys and uses lots of remedies tend to not be helthy to begin with (most "remedies" are excellent at hiding symptoms but don't do squat for the illness (caffeine and amphetamines are great to hide a cold, but you will be the schmuck that infects everyone))
6) unless you have a large enough sample size and follow got protocol in taking data your experiences are worth somewhere between zip and nil when it comes to protecting a population.
6b) also - did the people you know got sick within 2-3 weeks of vaccination? If so they got sick before the vaccine got to have full effect (if they got [noticeable] sick within four days they where already infected before getting the shot)
6c) You are telling me the hospitals in your country shuts down for two weeks every winter? Holy crap ;) (physicians and their nurses tend to have a coverage of about 80% when it comes to the flu-vaccination [in industralised countries])
7) in my country between 45 and 55% of tne people over 65 gets vaccinayed each year, and since they are not dropping like flies (life expectancy is 81.7yrs here) the whole "always get sick" can be ignored.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday September 27 2016, @10:12AM
> though that money could be going anywhere, pretty much it ends up in the pharmaceutical industry and doing something actually USEFUL rather than stopping your sniffles b
Zorg approves of your broken-window argument. If you're going to do capitalism, at least do it right.
Maybe that money currently spent on cold remedies could be put to better uses, but it would be far more efficient to take the middleman (the drug companies) out of the equation and let the snifflers themselves just directly spend it on improving their own quality of life, supporting other businesses, or even starting businesses of their own. The drug companies will still have enough to carry on doing what they do, I'm certain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @12:15PM
A cold doesn't injure you.
Apart from killing the old and weak, you're absolutely correct.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @12:41PM
Maybe that is it's purpose then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @02:17PM
*its
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @04:39PM
Smith?
(Score: 2) by gidds on Tuesday September 27 2016, @12:51PM
If that's the only change you make in your lifestyle — if you carry on going to work and using public transport and shops and everything else — then you're part of the reason why we all suffer!
I'm lucky enough to be able to work from home when necessary, so when I have anything infectious, I try to stay at home: partly because I usually feel pretty lousy and not up to the 3-hour commute, but partly because I don't want to share it with my work colleagues, fellow travellers, and everyone else I might meet.
And if that's the only change you need to make, then you're lucky! I've had colds which made me feel absolutely terrible for days on end. And there's nothing like the dismay that comes when you're booked to sing at some event (especially when it's a solo), and a week beforehand you realise you're getting a cold and there's no way you'll be able to sing properly... (Sometimes I can't even speak, let alone sing...)
I quite agree that most of the so-called remedies do little or nothing, though. I take paracetamol when needed, but other than that my main medicine is a strong ginger and lemon infusion.
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday September 27 2016, @07:16PM
I work in a country with several weeks of mandatory paid holiday leave, mandatory paid sick leave, compassionate leave, free healthcare and all kinds of worker benefits.
A day off work for a cold is bloody hilarious.
I'd be laughed out of my bosses office at best. And I consider them to be an extremely reasonable employer.
An employment tribunal over such things would almost certainly find AGAINST me. A cold or sneeze is not a reason to stay home.
P.S. I work in schools. I guarantee you that if it was a stomach infection or similar, I'd be signed off quickly by my employer. Children aren't allowed in if they've vomited in the last 48 hours.
But a cold? Nothing. I'd be laughed at even asking for a day off unless I was literally unable to work.
The reason you suffer with them is because you've avoided exposure to a minor nuisance for so long that they hit you harder than anyone else.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Wednesday September 28 2016, @12:08PM
I spend nearly 3 hours every weekday on public transport, and contract 2–3 colds per year, so I wouldn't exactly say I've 'avoided exposure'.
Maybe I'm just unlucky that they hit me hard. I do know from experience that if I'm not very careful it gets infected; last time that happened, it turned into laryngitis and I couldn't even speak for a week...
[sig redacted]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @04:14PM
This has got to be the DUMBEST, most uneducated comment I've read all week, and this is The Internet!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @02:19PM
Sign in, and you can mod it down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:46PM
keeping up with every post an ipaddress makes is not enough data mining?
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday September 27 2016, @09:17PM
A cold doesn't injure you. It doesn't destroy your ability to survive. It doesn't even hinder daily life past a tissue and a pause to sneeze. Yet it generates billions in "remedies" that do nothing.
It's funny how emotions play into this. I woke up this morning absolutely suffering from a cold. I felt so awful I had to take the day off of work. I went back to sleep, woke up later, saw this story, and thought "It'll probably never work, and it's probably not really worth it since a cold is really not that bad, but I think I would take this if I could. I'm sick of being sick 2-3 times a year and feeling awful. But that's probably not a very long-sighted position to take.
Then my son, also suffering from the same cold, got to a point where his breathing was bad enough I took him to the doctor.
Then they concluded he was in respiratory distress and sent us to the ER by ambulance.
Now I'm on the hook for a massive ER copay and goodness knows how much for the ambulance, and we're out of the hospital waiting for a ride to come get us (left the car at the Dr's clinic), and my son is fine but will have to take some extra asthma/respiratory meds the next few days, and I'm thinking "yeah, a cure for the common cold would be nice since somebody in my family seems to risk his life every time he gets one."
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday September 27 2016, @09:42PM
I think what you really want there is a damn healthcare system rather than "biggest wallet lives longest".
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday September 27 2016, @11:57PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:55PM
that's how socialism gets a foothold. then you get people like ledow evangelizing for their masters. it's fairly benevolent for a while but once they get everyone dependent and fully compliant they'll start making more and more decisions for people like the cattle they think you are. too many girls, everyone magically has boys. too many people, whoops noone gets pregnant. whoops we only meant that to last two generations. whoops we didn't mean for that flu shot to kill all the old people. whoops we didn't mean to make african women barren. whoops we didn't mean to alter the genes so new generations can never rebel. whoops we didn't mean to make genitalia non functional, or muscle mass much lower or intelligence or whatever those socialist scum decide to do for the good of "society".
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Tuesday September 27 2016, @09:42AM
The common cold will never be eradicated because there is too much money in supplying "remedies". Products like 'Lemsip' or 'Strepsils' make too much money to be just be vaccinated away.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Tuesday September 27 2016, @12:02PM
Without the common cold, how do we have any hope of surviving against Martian war machines?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @12:20PM
The weather here turned from record hot/dry to cold and rainy a couple of days ago. And I got a "seasonal cold", so the hope of a cold cure sure sounds (achoo) good to me now (sniff).
One positive result -- napped after dinner last night with a sore throat, missed the Trump-Clinton debate...