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Essentially you go from recovering patient to 20,000 therapeutic doses in 60-90 days. Note it is not a vaccine - a vaccine is something like part of a virus th
by DrScientist 7y ago
Essentially you go from recovering patient to 20,000 therapeutic doses in 60-90 days.
Note it is not a vaccine - a vaccine is something like part of a virus that then drives an immune response ( body evolves antibodies against it ) - here you are taking an antibody sequence you know works and directly putting that in the body and genetically programming the body to make it.
Here's how:
- find and clone the patients own antibody that allowed them to recover.
- deliver that antibody in nucleic acid form to new patients so they can make the antibody themselves.
The idea is to be able to produce enough doses quickly enough to protect front line staff in the containment phase.
As the antibody has already been discovered by the recovering patient, you can use single cell screening and cloning to retrieve the particular antibody gene.
The second step avoids many many months of building and scaling a protein manufacturing process ( though manufacturing steps still exist ).
It's a new technology and so carries some unknowns - but in the case of pandemic then you could argue these are justified.
There has already been a proof of principal run through and a number of companies were able to deliver proof of concepts within the timescale. The next question is how well these work in people.
- _tfi1 7y agoIt works well in humans: https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-positive-phase-1-results-first-systemic https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-d... Main finding was at the high dose, there were some adverse events but no serious adverse events, and they all self-resolved without intervention. At the lower doses (0.3 and 0.1mpk), it still provided months of protection against infection assuming the "protective level" is accurate.
- DrScientist 7y agoYep - it can work. However, normally there is a long and potentially winding road between a phase 1, through phases II & III to a successful market launch.
- _tfi1 7y agoYes, of course, but when one signs up for the military they can inject you with whatever they want. The FDA does not get involved. Combine that with an EUA, and all of a sudden you are injecting them and the nat sec apparatus 6 months from now if things get bad. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/01/31/Military-allowed-to-administer-unapproved-drugs/8455665298000/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/01/31/Military-allowed-to-... https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pdf/2018-Influenza-Guidance.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pdf/2018-Influenz...