By John
Miller , Ludwig Burger
ZURICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Breakthrough technology that
transforms the body into a virus-zapping vaccine factory is poised to
revolutionise the fight against COVID-19 but future pandemics and even cancer
could be next, scientists say.
The initial success of so-called messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)
vaccines in late-stage trials by Moderna as well as Pfizer and its German
partner BioNTech is the first proof the concept works.
Both experimental vaccines had efficacy rates above 90% based on interim
findings, which was far higher than expected and well above the 50% threshold
U.S. regulators insist upon for vaccines.
Now scientists say the technology, a slow-motion revolution in the
making since the discovery of mRNA nearly 60 years ago, could speed up the
development of new vaccines.
The traditional method of creating vaccines – introducing a weakened or
dead virus, or a piece of one, to stimulate the body’s immune system – takes
over a decade on average, according to a 2013 study. One pandemic flu vaccine
took over eight years while a hepatitis B vaccine was nearly 18 years in the
making.
Moderna’s vaccine went from gene sequencing to the first human injection
in 63 days.
With BioNTech and Pfizer’s COVID-19 candidate on a similar trajectory,
both could win regulatory approval this year, barely 12 months since the
coronavirus first emerged.
Other companies are pursuing the technology such as Germany’s CureVac
also has an mRNA vaccine candidate, though has yet to start a late-stage trial
and is hoping it will get the green light after July 2021.
“We’ll look back on the advances made in 2020 and say: ‘That was a
moment when science really did make a leap forward’,” said Jeremy Farrar,
director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, which is backed by
the Wellcome Trust.
Discovered in 1961, mRNA carries messages from the body’s DNA to its
cells, telling them to make the proteins needed for critical functions, such as
coordinating biological processes like digestion or fighting disease.
The experimental vaccines from Moderna as well as Pfizer and BioNTech
use lab-made mRNA to instruct cells to make the coronavirus’s spike proteins,
which spur the immune system into action without replicating like the actual
virus.
Back in 1990, scientists managed to get mice to generate proteins by
injecting mRNA, an early sign of the technology’s potential.
But early proponents such as Katalin Kariko, a Hungarian-born scientist
and senior vice president at BioNTech, were hampered by obstacles such as
mRNA’s instability in the body and its propensity to cause inflammatory
responses.
A breakthrough came around 2005 when Kariko, along with colleagues at
the University of Pennsylvania, figured out how to deliver mRNA without kicking
the immune system into overdrive.
Still, it took another 15 years - and a pandemic that brought the
world’s economy to its knees - to reach the cusp of success. Kariko said her
years of dogged pursuit once made her the butt of jokes for some university
colleagues.
“The last time they laughed at me and ridiculed me was when they learned
that I was going to join BioNTech seven years ago and they realised this
company (didn’t) even have a website,” she told Reuters. “But now, they learn
of BioNTech and that we can do good things.”
Kariko said her life’s work could pay dividends, not just against
COVID-19, but other diseases.
“It could be easier sailing for the next anti-viral product, a vaccine
for influenza and other infectious disease,” said Kariko, whose daughter is a
U.S. Olympic gold medalist rower.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-vaccines-technolog/breakthrough-covid-vaccine-tech-could-help-defeat-other-diseases-idUKKBN27W2PN
Coronavirus emerged in Italy
earlier than thought, Italian study shows November 15,
2020 5:18 PM
ROME (Reuters) - The new coronavirus was circulating in Italy since
September 2019, a study by the National Cancer Institute (INT) of the Italian
city of Milan shows, signaling that COVID-19 might have spread beyond China
earlier than previously thought.
The World Health Organization has said the new coronavirus and COVID-19,
the respiratory disease it causes, were unknown before the outbreak was first
reported in Wuhan, in central China, in December.
Italy’s first COVID-19 patient was detected on Feb. 21 in a little town
near Milan, in the northern region of Lombardy.
But the Italian researchers’ findings, published by the INT’s scientific
magazine Tumori Journal, show that 11,6% of 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in
a lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020, had
developed coronavirus antibodies well before February.
A further specific SARS-CoV-2 antibodies test was carried out by the
University of Siena for the same research titled “Unexpected detection of
SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the pre-pandemic period in Italy”.
It showed that four cases dated back to the first week of October were
also positive for antibodies neutralizing the virus, meaning they had got
infected in September, Giovanni Apolone, a co-author of the study, told
Reuters.
“This is the main finding: people with no symptoms not only were
positive after the serological tests but had also antibodies able to kill the
virus,” Apolone said.
“It means that the new coronavirus can circulate among the population
for long and with a low rate of lethality not because it is disappearing but
only to surge again,” he added.
Italian researchers told Reuters in March that they reported a higher
than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last
quarter of 2019 in a sign that the new coronavirus might have circulated earlier
than previously thought.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-timing/coronavirus-emerged-in-italy-earlier-than-thought-italian-study-shows-idUKKBN27V0KF
Europe’s New Drug Agency Head
Warns of Vaccine Safety Challenges BySuzi Ring November 16, 2020, 5:00 AM GMT
·
·
Monitoring the safety of Covid-19 vaccines, especially
those relying on novel technologies such as messenger RNA, will be one of the
biggest challenges once shots are rolled out widely, according to Europe’s new
drug agency chief.
Positive results won’t “remove the need to monitor very
carefully these new vaccines, particularly the first couple that seem to be
coming through,” Emer Cooke, who becomes executive director of the European
Medicines Agency Monday, said in an interview. “We haven’t had mRNA
vaccines before, and when it goes into a large population you need to be sure”
safety remains under review.
Cooke, the first woman to run the EMA in its 25-year
history, takes over at a pivotal time as the agency grapples with both the
pandemic and Brexit. Europe’s equivalent to the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration is also evaluating new products such as mRNA vaccines, which
essentially teach the body’s cells to make their own protection and have never
been approved for use in humans.
The regulator has started two
accelerated reviews for potential Covid vaccines from Pfizer
Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc , with the first approval expected
soon. Pfizer and partner BioNTech SE last week became the first drugmakers
in the race to release
advanced trial data , saying their mRNA vaccine was more than 90% effective
in preventing the illness.
More data from fellow mRNA
vaccine creator Moderna Inc. is expected in the coming
days , while Astra and its partner, the University of Oxford, may also have
preliminary results in the next few weeks.
While many questions remain about longevity of protection
and how easily vaccines can be deployed globally, Cooke, who follows Guido Rasi
in the EMA’s top spot, said she’s encouraged by the data and hopeful that
strong results will help with take-up. Vaccine advocates have become concerned
that fading trust in governments, political interference and the quest to
create a shot in record time could fuel doubts about Covid vaccines, hindering
the rollout.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-16/europe-s-new-drug-agency-head-warns-of-vaccine-safety-challenges?srnd=premium-europe
Next, some vaccine links
kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most
informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World
Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines . https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY
Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker . https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford
Website . https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
Regulatory
Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker . https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
https://rt.live/
Covid19info.live
https://wuflu.live/
Centers for Disease Control
Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
“If the stock exchange is abolished,” said
Jules, “men like me will always set up a black bourse: it will come back
House of All Nations. 1938.
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC
energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards.
A new and
efficient way to create nanographene for power and display devices Date: November 11, 2020
Source: University of Tokyo
Summary: Nanographene is a material that is
anticipated to radically improve solar cells, fuel cells, LEDs and more.
Typically the synthesis of this material has been imprecise and difficult to
control. For the first time, researchers have discovered a simple way to gain
precise control over the fabrication of nanographene. In doing so, they have
shed light on the previously unclear chemical processes involved in
nanographene production.
You have probably heard of graphene, one-atom-thick sheets of carbon
molecules, that are supposed to revolutionize technology. Units of graphene are
known as nanographene; these are tailored to specific functions and as such
their fabrication process is more complicated than that of generic graphene.
Nanographene is made by selectively removing hydrogen atoms from organic
molecules of carbon and hydrogen, a process called dehydrogenation.
"Dehydrogenation takes place on a metal surface such as that of
silver, gold or copper, which acts as a catalyst, a material that enables or
speeds up a reaction," said Assistant Professor Akitoshi Shiotari from the
Department of Advanced Materials Science. "However, this surface is large
relative to the target organic molecules. This contributes to the difficulty in
crafting specific nanographene formations. We needed a better understanding of
the catalytic process and a more precise way to control it."
Shiotari and his team, through exploring various ways to perform
nanographene synthesis, came up with a method that offers the precise control
necessary and is also very efficient. They used a specialized kind of
microscope called an atomic force microscope (AFM), which measures details of
molecules with a nanoscopic needlelike probe. This probe can be used not only
to detect certain characteristics of individual atoms, but also to manipulate
them.
"We discovered that the metal probe of the AFM could break carbon-hydrogen
bonds in organic molecules," said Shiotari. "It could do so very
precisely given its tip is so minute, and it could break bonds without the need
for thermal energy. This means we can now fabricate nanographene components in
a more controlled way than ever before."
To verify what they were seeing, the team repeated the process with a
variety of organic compounds, in particular two molecules with very different
structures called benzonoids and nonbenzonoids. This demonstrates the AFM probe
in question is able to pull hydrogen atoms from different kinds of materials.
Such a detail is important if this method is to be scaled up into a commercial
means of production.
"I envisage this technique could be the ultimate way to create
functional nanomolecules from the bottom up," said Shiotari. "We can
use an AFM to apply other stimuli to target molecules, such as injecting
electrons, electronic fields or repulsive forces. It is thrilling to be able to
see, control and manipulate structures on such an incredibly miniscule
scale."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201111092932.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29
House of All
Nations The novel portrays the inner workings of
the financial world of a bank in Paris in the early 1930s. The bank is
populated by a cast of shady characters who are manipulative, unsavory
schemers. The owner of the Bertillon Brothers bank, Jules Bertillon,
exemplifies all that is bad about the bank and will stop at nothing to achieve
his sole aim of making as much money as he can.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_All_Nations
Sadly, this was
mistaken for the instruction course for all modern banksters.
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