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The first human trial in Europe of a coronavirus vaccine has begun in Oxford

242 points by dustinmoris 7y ago

chrisandchips 7y ago
I don’t know much about the subject - when one of these institutions discovers a vaccine, do the rest just give up and settle the loss of having come second in the race? Do the private companies then automatically switch to producing as much of the successful vaccine as possible to meet demand and turn a profit?
- egwor 7y ago
  I imagine they keep going since side effects could be better, or it could be more effective.
  - mattkrause 7y ago
    A handful of the first SARS vaccines “worked” (in that they led to antibody production), but also had nasty side effects.
    - dehrmann 7y ago
      It's like how there's a cure for HIV that you really don't want.
      - djsumdog 7y ago
        You mean death? Or am I missing something?
        gridlockd 7y ago
        HIV is curable but the treatment is generally worse than just management with antivirals.
        mattkrause 7y ago
        I would assume they mean the CCR5 stem cell/bone marrow thing. A handful of patients (2?) have undetectable viral loads after being treated for leukemia. In these cases, the bone marrow or stem cells were from donors with a mutation in CCR5 that confers some resistance to HIV. The mechanism isn't completely understood, AFAIK, since people with the CCR5 delta32 mutation have partial, but not complete, resistance to HIV normally. It's not a very viable treatment yet: the transplant procedure is brutal (a friend went through it) and you need to be unlucky enough to need a transplant, yet lucky enough to find a donor that has the right mutations (which again, are not completely known) AND is otherwise compatible with the patient. Still, very exciting for a possible mechanism, but also probably not coming to a hospital near you this decade. Here's one of the studies: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa0802905 https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa0802905
- glofish 7y ago
  not really, usually there is less competition for developing vaccines as the timelines are more relaxed and it would be a waste of money to have several groups discover the vaccines to the same disease Multiple different vaccines could (and probably will) be discovered. These may have different mechanisms and tradeoffs and those too will be taken into account when scaling up to population. Now who owns what, who gets it first, and who gets paid and in what way, those are thorny issues that have not yet been worked out.
- rrmm 7y ago
  No, in fact I think Bill Gates has fronted the money to develop several candidate vaccines fully to shorten the time to widespread introduction as much as possible. Likely all of them would be developed anyway as some might end up failing (either during testing or during mfr) and I imagine demand is going to be high.
- dustinmoris 7y ago
  no, there’s still IP which plays a role and different vaccines have different pros and cons and logistically it might also be easier to scale multi different vaccines to the demands of the world population than a single one.
- fuckknows 7y ago
  Even if we have one, the larger problem will be scale. Having more than one type of effective vaccine available may actually be useful, since our existing manufacturing capacity for the different manufacturing processes can be used.
  - lbeltrame 7y ago
    That is also why all the major players with vaccine development already in humans (including but not limited to this one) have already started making manufacturing deals with large pharmaceutical corpoprations. Vaccination on large scale will likely require tens of millions of doses, if not more (and let's not forget you may need more than one inoculation).
    - wikibob 7y ago
      Where do you derive the “tens of millions” of for the number of doses required? That wouldn’t even be enough to vaccinate a mid sized EU country.
      - lbeltrame 7y ago
        I originally wrote "billions", thought I was exaggerating, so I edited the post. Probably off on the other side of the interval.
    - dehrmann 7y ago
      The vaccine manufacturing point needs way more attention. We were talking about ventilator manufacturing weeks after there was no chance they'd be done in time. The economic benefits to distributing a vaccine quickly would be huge, but I haven't heard world leaders talking about how to do it--they're still on the last war. Luckily, Bill Gates is spending on it, but this needs way more attention because this is our chance to be ahead of the virus for once. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/bill-gates-7-potential-coronavirus-vaccines/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/bill-gates-7-potentia...
- rsynnott 7y ago
  It's likely that by the time they know this works (or doesn't work) and is safe (or isn't safe), many others will be in an advanced state of development. Totally plausible that there'll be a few available at some point. This is a government funded university project, so "losing the race" is likely not a primary concern; I'm sure if someone else came out with a magic vaccine fully tested and ready to mass manufacture tomorrow the researchers on this project would be pretty happy about that.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Derek Lowe gives a good overview of how different kinds of vaccines work here: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/coronavirus-vaccine-prospects https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/co... The short answer is that there is a bunch of different types of vaccines, and each type has different constraints on their production. Someone who makes an mRNA vaccine isn't going to be able to easily switch to making a live attenuated vaccine instead, for example. Also, first does not necessarily mean best: again, with so many approaches, a vaccine using a different approach can have wildly different side-effects and risk factors. So being second (or even, say, tenth) isn't necessarily a loss. That said, there are so many projects pushing forward that many of them are bound to fail early. Given the history of cooperation already in this crisis, some of those companies who find their coronavirus vaccine efforts going up in smoke may well choose to help scale out other, more successful efforts--or instead help by taking on more of the current vaccine production efforts, as polio and the flu aren't going away just because coronavirus is here.
- tedunangst 7y ago
  The Sabin polio vaccine continued to be developed after the Salk vaccine was already deployed for various reasons.
- empath75 7y ago
  I imagine that what is discovered trying to develop a vaccine for this will be readily applied to other viruses.
- JProthero 7y ago
  The Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Government, Patrick Vallance (who is a clinical pharmacologist, and formerly president of research and development at GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical multinational), said this in a Government press conference on 17 April: 'The vaccine could come from anywhere. We've got a domestic vaccine discovery programme in the UK which is being supported, absolutely, as fast as we can go, but the vaccine can come from anywhere. GSK and Sanofi have announced they're doing a vaccine together, which is fantastic news. Most of the big companies are doing vaccines. This is going to come from somewhere, we just need to back lots of horses at the moment, and to make sure we're in a great position to access a vaccine when it occurs. And that's why organisations like CEPI are so important as well; to make sure that the world sees this as a way to get a vaccine, and we all need to be part of the same approach to trying to get as many vaccines as we can. And we may need more than one vaccine.' Link to the press conference: https://youtu.be/jWOCpmjdHiw?t=1430 https://youtu.be/jWOCpmjdHiw?t=1430 Some other comments have referred to the Gates Foundation's contribution to developing vaccines; the foundation's involvement in establishing CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), which Vallance referred to, is a significant part of this.
jdalgetty 7y ago
The comments on that article are something else!
- toyg 7y ago
  Reading comments on any mainstream news site inevitably brings total loss of faith in humanity. This goes double in a country where tabloids dominate public discourse.
  - keithnz 7y ago
    I think comments tend to attract certain people. The vast majority of people don't say anything so you are left with the squeaky wheels. But because when you read it it feels like a overwhelming amount of people that are seemingly very ignorant it does feel quite disheartening. I've personally limited my exposure to comment sections of most news these days.
    - chimprich 7y ago
      The problem with reasonable people withdrawing from the most popular online forums is that you end up with a vicious circle of the most unreasonable people arguing with each other and influencing public opinion.
    - usrusr 7y ago
      Add a real name policy to the mix and you will only retain the absolute elite of squeaky wheels.
- prmph 7y ago
  Indeed, I couldn't find a boring one. So much for the famed understated-ness of the British
  - sdwa 7y ago
    I think we've gradually been Americanised. I don't recognise their behaviour as British, I find it all a bit embarrassing really.
LandR 7y ago
I'm about far from anti-vaxer stance as its possible to be, so please don't think this is where this is coming from, but isn't this crazy quick compared to how long vaccines usually take? Is the long time to create vaccines not usually to make sure they are safe? What is different now that it can be done quicker? Is it just the sheer amount of effort and cash being thrown at it?
- afarrell 7y ago
  A lot of labs were researching MERS and SARS already.
- fuckknows 7y ago
  So according to In The Pipeline[1] they essentially modified their existing MERS vaccine so that it worked for SARS-COV-2. Their original vaccine had already gone through phase 1 trials and had shown efficacy and no harmful side effects. [1] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/23/a-close-look-at-the-frontrunning-coronavirus-vaccines-as-of-april-23 https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/23/a-...
  - throwaway888abc 7y ago
    Thanks
  - mcarmichael 7y ago
    Derek Lowe is terrific in communicating complex ideas in the field to concerned lay observers like me; he's been a great resource for reliable information about the science of this thing. Just to clarify; the ChAdOx1 MERS prospect hasn't proceeded to a trial demonstrating efficacy in human subjects (as yet). That's a particularly important distinction here, given the nature of the novel delivery mechanism[1] and prior observation of complications in SARS-CoV-1 vaccine development[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_vector#Adenoviruses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_vector#Adenoviruses [2] https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v22n3%20Suppl%204/25.htm https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v22n3%20Suppl%204/25.htm
gabipurcaru 7y ago
WHO publishes a list of the vaccine landscape here - https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/key-action/novel-coronavirus-landscape-ncov.pdf https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/key-action/n... As of April 20 2020, there were 5 in clinical evaluation and 71 in preclinical evaluation. I'm a layperson, but very interesting to see the different techniques and testing methodologies used.
twic 7y ago
The thing i like most about this vaccine is that it's a T-cell vaccine. Very broadly speaking, the adaptive immune system has two arms. One arm, humoral immunity, is about detecting foreign substances in the spaces outside cells: B-cells make antibodies, antibodies inspect molecules floating around, a match triggers the B-cells to proliferate and make more antibodies, and then antibodies tell macrophages and various other brutal cells to destroy and eat everything in sight, resulting in inflammation, but hopefully killing the invader. The other arm, cellular immunity, is about detecting foreign proteins inside cells: T-cells make T-cell receptors, T-cell receptors inspect peptides presented on the surface of cells through some amazing machinery culminating in the MHC I protein, a match triggers the T-cells to proliferate, and the T-cells themselves go round triggering self-destruction of cells presenting the foreign peptides. (I'm leaving out MHC II and helper T cells here, let alone T-regulatory cells, gamma delta T cells and all sorts of other things i don't know about) Both wings are useful in response to a viral infection, but ultimately, the cellular immunity is key. Viruses commandeer and replicate inside cells, so to stop an infection, you need to find and kill those cells. Cellular immunity does that. Vaccines based on injecting proteins or dead viruses can only develop humoral immunity. Vaccines based on modified viruses, like this one, can also develop cellular immunity. In theory. So far, there are no T-cell vaccines.
- krillln 7y ago
  so, we can say that B-Cell vaccines are good enough coz they have already been working on other types of viral infection, right?
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    They are likely good enough yes, presence of strong antibodies pretty much means there's no way the virus can outpace the immune response, and it often is neutralized so strongly you wouldn't even notice inoculation.
  - twic 7y ago
    Bear in mind that there are lots of viruses we don't have vaccines for, and not for want of trying.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
oli5679 7y ago
There is a strong argument for doing a challenge trial, using young people, on this candidate.
- ttul 7y ago
  Even though I am not that young, I might sign up for that. If there is already evidence in vivo of the vaccine’s effectiveness, IMHO the risk would be tolerable.
  - jseliger 7y ago
    I too would sign up; I signed up here: https://www.thecovidchallenge.org/ https://www.thecovidchallenge.org/ to support the effort.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Remember there would be a control group.
    - mantap 7y ago
      Does there need to be a control group? Can we not detect if the vaccine is working or not without one?
      - nsgi 7y ago
        Not to the standards required to show its safety and effectiveness, no
- jeremyjh 7y ago
  In a study like that would half the participants still be in the control group?
  - refurb 7y ago
    Infecting, or at least exposing, healthy, unvaccinated, people with the virus? Pretty sure that would never make it past an IRB review.
twomoretime 7y ago
If one had strong reasons to suspect a mechanism by which a vaccine could actually be deadly or fatal, but this mechanism had not been verified explicitly in literature, would they be ethically obligated to warn participants in advance?
- chemeng 7y ago
  If there is reason to believe it presents a material risk to their health and well-being. Yes.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  Is this a rhetorical question?
Gatsky 7y ago
Maybe there will be a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, but the one lesson to take away from all this is that if a truly terrible pandemic hits (eg more contagious than SARS-CoV-2 but with a 10%+ mortality rate) a vaccine won’t save us. I’m not sure what will. Relying on the source country to quickly identify an outbreak and raise the alarm obviously isn’t going to work...
- tluyben2 7y ago
  We never have been here before in almost everyone’s lifetime; there are a few over 100 year old people who did ofcourse, but that is it. As with wars on your own soil, people forget fast. In Asia my HK colleagues got stressed in january as they did see this before and they (the people without the gov) already automatically took more care. If this occurs ‘soonish’, I think a lot of people and countries will act differently; I know I will. I was still travelling as, silly me, trusted my gov to warn me; big mistake. I would have wanted to self isolate a month earlier to make sure; next time that will happen. I hope there will not be a next time. Obviously the issue is, as with everything that relates to the effectiveness of education on most people, how to teach future generations to not be so lax. I am not sure how that would work. It does not work generally or with a massive delay; exactly like the parent trying to save the child from making the same mistakes as she did but the child having the need not to listen (old people, what do they know he, world changed and such!) and experience all the crap themselves instead. I think, even with a far worse virus, if all countries would’ve shut all borders with china and self quarantined immediately begin january, nothing would happen. Just everyone, every gov and person, thinks and many keep thinking it is all blah and nothing will happen to them. Apparently only the firsthand experience of ‘something bad’ (like Boris Johnson) will actually give them perspective. I think this prepared us well for a worse virus for the coming 20 years; however I think after that, it is will drop off and you will be right; most people will be screwed.
  - jfoster 7y ago
    > We never have been here before in almost everyone’s lifetime That's not really true. 1957 "Asian Flu" resulted in > 1 million deaths, and 1968 "Hong Kong Flu" resulted ~1 million deaths. Difficult to compare viruses directly, but I would say those were in the vicinity of something like covid-19, which has not yet resulted in even 200k deaths, but certainly had the potential to kill millions of people. (and may yet...)
notechback 7y ago
I get that everyone like to put "we're the first" in their press release but there are already a number of trials, eg house the day before a German company was reportedly starting trials https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/22/world/europe/22reuters-health-coronavirus-vaccine-biontech.html https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/22/world/europe/22re...
- punnerud 7y ago
  And trials started weeks ago in Norway as well: https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/who-global-corona-study-starts-in-norway/id2695532/ https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/who-global-corona-stud...
  - egao1980 7y ago
    Or Russia - https://ria.ru/20200411/1569898745.html https://ria.ru/20200411/1569898745.html
    - remarkEon 7y ago
      (I don't speak Russian, yet) Given how politicized this has gotten, in general for treatment of this virus, I'm not optimistic that we'll be sharing information. Praying I'm wrong.
      - egao1980 7y ago
        Basically on 11 of April they started a trial. Up to today WHO approved for trial 9 potential vaccines made in Russia.
    - egao1980 7y ago
      The new vaccine is good but arcticle title is not.
  - tallanvor 7y ago
    The trials in Norway are about treatment, not vaccines.
SCAQTony 7y ago
COVID-19 is a retrovirus, much like HIV. They both have similar s-protein as well. When discovered in 1983 that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS, it took 12-years for an antiviral to reach the market. In the past 37-years, no vaccine has panned out against HIV. As for COVID-19 "Houston, we have a problem."
- chimprich 7y ago
  COVID-19 is not caused by a retrovirus. Our inability to develop a vaccine for HIV is not very relevant as they are very different viruses. The development of this vaccine has not been from a standing start. From the article: "The Oxford team has already developed a vaccine against Mers, another type of coronavirus, using the same approach - and that had promising results in clinical trials.".
- thehappypm 7y ago
  HIV, as I understand it, is a really difficult virus in general because it attacks the immune system. Our typical vaccine playbook doesn't really work well against it because our whole playbook depends on a healthy immune system.
- cherpa12 7y ago
  I believe you are correct. I believe COVID 19 IS in the category of RNA based retroviruses. No one here is saying it is the same thing as AIDS! That's silliness. But tests being rolled out on COVID 19 contain a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). I believe the virus does fall into the retrovirus category; like malaria, AIDS and ebola.
djsumdog 7y ago
How exactly are vaccines made? Like how do you make a brand new one? For smallpox, the first vaccine came from cowpox (or possibly horsepox). People didn't know what viruses were, but horsepox happened to be similar enough to generate the same antibodies, but not kill people. But I've never seen a good documentary on how vaccines are made for diseases today. YouTube just seems to be filled with professor's lectures from introclasses. Are live viruses used and, if so, how are they made inert yet cause the immune system to generate the same antibodies? Anyone have a documentary with the technical details of any of the modern vaccine generation techniques?
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Maybe not a documentary but I remember seeing some discussions on Reddit But basically it's more complicated than the usual "attenuated live virus/dead virus". Tou can have synthetic vaccines, targeting different parts of the virus. Also there are several ways of attenuating pathogens (look up the bcg vaccine for one interesting example)
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/coronavirus-vaccine-prospects https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/co... Doesn't answer your question but hints at the complexity.
- HillRat 7y ago
  Basically, there are three primary approaches to safely introducing antigens to the immune system: you can inactivate (or kill) a virus through methods such as heat treatment; you can attenuate it (make it less well-adapted to humans) by introducing it into foreign hosts until its adaptive mutations make it safe for humans; or you can synthesize molecular antigenic subunits and introduce those on a viral carrier or with chemicals to stimulate an immune response. Experience with inactivated SARS vaccines suggests that protection is incomplete and, worse yet, the vaccines trigger immunopathic responses that can cause serious damage. Most focus is on subunit vaccines, but s-protein-based vaccines in feline coronavirus have been shown to actually worsen the effects of reinfection, so researchers are understandably cautious.
neuronic 7y ago
So 2 days ago, we received the news that the first human trials on a vaccines by a biotech firm from Mainz have gotten approval by the Paul Ehrlich Institute [1] as well in Germany. Good news, let's all work together to kick this things ass! Source [German News]: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundheit/coronavirus-impfstoff-deutschland-biontech-1.4884844 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundheit/coronavirus-impfstoff... Main source [PEI, English]: https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/press-releases/year/2020/08-first-clinical-trial-sars-cov-2-germany.html https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/press-releases/year/2020/08-f... [1] a federal institute for vaccines
Madmallard 7y ago
They tried corona virus vaccines already after the first SARS outbreak. When patients were re-exposed to the virus they had severe auto-immune lung pathologies. Sounds super problematic. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3335060/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3335060/ https://jvi.asm.org/content/85/23/12201 https://jvi.asm.org/content/85/23/12201 https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23563-threatwatch-could-a-mers-vaccine-make-people-sicker/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23563-threatwatch-cou...
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  Note that in the reports mentioned, the ‘patients’ are mice and ferrets.
hans_castorp 7y ago
Germany started trials on April 22nd using a vaccine named BNT162. Apparently with non-infected people first.
royletron 7y ago
My partner is taking part in the trial in Oxford. So far there was a bit of an anomaly on her blood work so they're bringing in her in for another round of tests but I'm happy to ask her to share (or allow me to share by proxy) her experience. Obviously she has no idea whether she is in the control group or not.
- robbyt 7y ago
  Are they receiving any compensation?
  - tim333 7y ago
    I don't think so. Travel expenses refunded I think.
  - KaiserPro 7y ago
    From what I recall, its ~500 pounds
  - jjar 7y ago
    Here's the information sheet - https://www.covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk/participate-trial-oxford https://www.covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk/participate-trial-oxfo... > If you participate in the study until the end, you will receive a total payment of between £190-625, dependent on group. My housemate hoped to take part but was not selected.
  - royletron 7y ago
    It'll depend how far she progresses but the range of £150-£600 is what we have been told
justlexi93 7y ago
I just hope that this won't make the situation worst and that it will work. I can't wait for this pandemic to be over, I really miss my old life. Moving on stay home people.

242 points by dustinmoris 7y ago

I don’t know much about the subject - when one of these institutions discovers a vaccine, do the rest just give up and settle the loss of having come second in the race? Do the private companies then automatically switch to producing as much of the successful vaccine as possible to meet demand and turn a profit?

egwor 7y ago
I imagine they keep going since side effects could be better, or it could be more effective.
- mattkrause 7y ago
  A handful of the first SARS vaccines “worked” (in that they led to antibody production), but also had nasty side effects.
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    It's like how there's a cure for HIV that you really don't want.
    - djsumdog 7y ago
      You mean death? Or am I missing something?
      - gridlockd 7y ago
        HIV is curable but the treatment is generally worse than just management with antivirals.
      - mattkrause 7y ago
        I would assume they mean the CCR5 stem cell/bone marrow thing. A handful of patients (2?) have undetectable viral loads after being treated for leukemia. In these cases, the bone marrow or stem cells were from donors with a mutation in CCR5 that confers some resistance to HIV. The mechanism isn't completely understood, AFAIK, since people with the CCR5 delta32 mutation have partial, but not complete, resistance to HIV normally. It's not a very viable treatment yet: the transplant procedure is brutal (a friend went through it) and you need to be unlucky enough to need a transplant, yet lucky enough to find a donor that has the right mutations (which again, are not completely known) AND is otherwise compatible with the patient. Still, very exciting for a possible mechanism, but also probably not coming to a hospital near you this decade. Here's one of the studies: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa0802905 https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa0802905
glofish 7y ago
not really, usually there is less competition for developing vaccines as the timelines are more relaxed and it would be a waste of money to have several groups discover the vaccines to the same disease Multiple different vaccines could (and probably will) be discovered. These may have different mechanisms and tradeoffs and those too will be taken into account when scaling up to population. Now who owns what, who gets it first, and who gets paid and in what way, those are thorny issues that have not yet been worked out.
rrmm 7y ago
No, in fact I think Bill Gates has fronted the money to develop several candidate vaccines fully to shorten the time to widespread introduction as much as possible. Likely all of them would be developed anyway as some might end up failing (either during testing or during mfr) and I imagine demand is going to be high.
dustinmoris 7y ago
no, there’s still IP which plays a role and different vaccines have different pros and cons and logistically it might also be easier to scale multi different vaccines to the demands of the world population than a single one.
fuckknows 7y ago
Even if we have one, the larger problem will be scale. Having more than one type of effective vaccine available may actually be useful, since our existing manufacturing capacity for the different manufacturing processes can be used.
- lbeltrame 7y ago
  That is also why all the major players with vaccine development already in humans (including but not limited to this one) have already started making manufacturing deals with large pharmaceutical corpoprations. Vaccination on large scale will likely require tens of millions of doses, if not more (and let's not forget you may need more than one inoculation).
  - wikibob 7y ago
    Where do you derive the “tens of millions” of for the number of doses required? That wouldn’t even be enough to vaccinate a mid sized EU country.
    - lbeltrame 7y ago
      I originally wrote "billions", thought I was exaggerating, so I edited the post. Probably off on the other side of the interval.
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    The vaccine manufacturing point needs way more attention. We were talking about ventilator manufacturing weeks after there was no chance they'd be done in time. The economic benefits to distributing a vaccine quickly would be huge, but I haven't heard world leaders talking about how to do it--they're still on the last war. Luckily, Bill Gates is spending on it, but this needs way more attention because this is our chance to be ahead of the virus for once. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/bill-gates-7-potential-coronavirus-vaccines/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/bill-gates-7-potentia...
rsynnott 7y ago
It's likely that by the time they know this works (or doesn't work) and is safe (or isn't safe), many others will be in an advanced state of development. Totally plausible that there'll be a few available at some point. This is a government funded university project, so "losing the race" is likely not a primary concern; I'm sure if someone else came out with a magic vaccine fully tested and ready to mass manufacture tomorrow the researchers on this project would be pretty happy about that.
jcranmer 7y ago
Derek Lowe gives a good overview of how different kinds of vaccines work here: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/coronavirus-vaccine-prospects https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/co... The short answer is that there is a bunch of different types of vaccines, and each type has different constraints on their production. Someone who makes an mRNA vaccine isn't going to be able to easily switch to making a live attenuated vaccine instead, for example. Also, first does not necessarily mean best: again, with so many approaches, a vaccine using a different approach can have wildly different side-effects and risk factors. So being second (or even, say, tenth) isn't necessarily a loss. That said, there are so many projects pushing forward that many of them are bound to fail early. Given the history of cooperation already in this crisis, some of those companies who find their coronavirus vaccine efforts going up in smoke may well choose to help scale out other, more successful efforts--or instead help by taking on more of the current vaccine production efforts, as polio and the flu aren't going away just because coronavirus is here.
tedunangst 7y ago
The Sabin polio vaccine continued to be developed after the Salk vaccine was already deployed for various reasons.
empath75 7y ago
I imagine that what is discovered trying to develop a vaccine for this will be readily applied to other viruses.
JProthero 7y ago
The Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Government, Patrick Vallance (who is a clinical pharmacologist, and formerly president of research and development at GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical multinational), said this in a Government press conference on 17 April: 'The vaccine could come from anywhere. We've got a domestic vaccine discovery programme in the UK which is being supported, absolutely, as fast as we can go, but the vaccine can come from anywhere. GSK and Sanofi have announced they're doing a vaccine together, which is fantastic news. Most of the big companies are doing vaccines. This is going to come from somewhere, we just need to back lots of horses at the moment, and to make sure we're in a great position to access a vaccine when it occurs. And that's why organisations like CEPI are so important as well; to make sure that the world sees this as a way to get a vaccine, and we all need to be part of the same approach to trying to get as many vaccines as we can. And we may need more than one vaccine.' Link to the press conference: https://youtu.be/jWOCpmjdHiw?t=1430 https://youtu.be/jWOCpmjdHiw?t=1430 Some other comments have referred to the Gates Foundation's contribution to developing vaccines; the foundation's involvement in establishing CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), which Vallance referred to, is a significant part of this.

jdalgetty 7y ago

The comments on that article are something else!

toyg 7y ago
Reading comments on any mainstream news site inevitably brings total loss of faith in humanity. This goes double in a country where tabloids dominate public discourse.
- keithnz 7y ago
  I think comments tend to attract certain people. The vast majority of people don't say anything so you are left with the squeaky wheels. But because when you read it it feels like a overwhelming amount of people that are seemingly very ignorant it does feel quite disheartening. I've personally limited my exposure to comment sections of most news these days.
  - chimprich 7y ago
    The problem with reasonable people withdrawing from the most popular online forums is that you end up with a vicious circle of the most unreasonable people arguing with each other and influencing public opinion.
  - usrusr 7y ago
    Add a real name policy to the mix and you will only retain the absolute elite of squeaky wheels.
prmph 7y ago
Indeed, I couldn't find a boring one. So much for the famed understated-ness of the British
- sdwa 7y ago
  I think we've gradually been Americanised. I don't recognise their behaviour as British, I find it all a bit embarrassing really.

LandR 7y ago

I'm about far from anti-vaxer stance as its possible to be, so please don't think this is where this is coming from, but isn't this crazy quick compared to how long vaccines usually take? Is the long time to create vaccines not usually to make sure they are safe? What is different now that it can be done quicker? Is it just the sheer amount of effort and cash being thrown at it?

afarrell 7y ago
A lot of labs were researching MERS and SARS already.
fuckknows 7y ago
So according to In The Pipeline[1] they essentially modified their existing MERS vaccine so that it worked for SARS-COV-2. Their original vaccine had already gone through phase 1 trials and had shown efficacy and no harmful side effects. [1] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/23/a-close-look-at-the-frontrunning-coronavirus-vaccines-as-of-april-23 https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/23/a-...
- throwaway888abc 7y ago
  Thanks
- mcarmichael 7y ago
  Derek Lowe is terrific in communicating complex ideas in the field to concerned lay observers like me; he's been a great resource for reliable information about the science of this thing. Just to clarify; the ChAdOx1 MERS prospect hasn't proceeded to a trial demonstrating efficacy in human subjects (as yet). That's a particularly important distinction here, given the nature of the novel delivery mechanism[1] and prior observation of complications in SARS-CoV-1 vaccine development[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_vector#Adenoviruses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_vector#Adenoviruses [2] https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v22n3%20Suppl%204/25.htm https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v22n3%20Suppl%204/25.htm

gabipurcaru 7y ago

WHO publishes a list of the vaccine landscape here - https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/key-action/novel-coronavirus-landscape-ncov.pdf https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/key-action/n... As of April 20 2020, there were 5 in clinical evaluation and 71 in preclinical evaluation. I'm a layperson, but very interesting to see the different techniques and testing methodologies used.

twic 7y ago

The thing i like most about this vaccine is that it's a T-cell vaccine. Very broadly speaking, the adaptive immune system has two arms. One arm, humoral immunity, is about detecting foreign substances in the spaces outside cells: B-cells make antibodies, antibodies inspect molecules floating around, a match triggers the B-cells to proliferate and make more antibodies, and then antibodies tell macrophages and various other brutal cells to destroy and eat everything in sight, resulting in inflammation, but hopefully killing the invader. The other arm, cellular immunity, is about detecting foreign proteins inside cells: T-cells make T-cell receptors, T-cell receptors inspect peptides presented on the surface of cells through some amazing machinery culminating in the MHC I protein, a match triggers the T-cells to proliferate, and the T-cells themselves go round triggering self-destruction of cells presenting the foreign peptides. (I'm leaving out MHC II and helper T cells here, let alone T-regulatory cells, gamma delta T cells and all sorts of other things i don't know about) Both wings are useful in response to a viral infection, but ultimately, the cellular immunity is key. Viruses commandeer and replicate inside cells, so to stop an infection, you need to find and kill those cells. Cellular immunity does that. Vaccines based on injecting proteins or dead viruses can only develop humoral immunity. Vaccines based on modified viruses, like this one, can also develop cellular immunity. In theory. So far, there are no T-cell vaccines.

krillln 7y ago
so, we can say that B-Cell vaccines are good enough coz they have already been working on other types of viral infection, right?
- sudosysgen 7y ago
  They are likely good enough yes, presence of strong antibodies pretty much means there's no way the virus can outpace the immune response, and it often is neutralized so strongly you wouldn't even notice inoculation.
- twic 7y ago
  Bear in mind that there are lots of viruses we don't have vaccines for, and not for want of trying.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

oli5679 7y ago

There is a strong argument for doing a challenge trial, using young people, on this candidate.

ttul 7y ago
Even though I am not that young, I might sign up for that. If there is already evidence in vivo of the vaccine’s effectiveness, IMHO the risk would be tolerable.
- jseliger 7y ago
  I too would sign up; I signed up here: https://www.thecovidchallenge.org/ https://www.thecovidchallenge.org/ to support the effort.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Remember there would be a control group.
  - mantap 7y ago
    Does there need to be a control group? Can we not detect if the vaccine is working or not without one?
    - nsgi 7y ago
      Not to the standards required to show its safety and effectiveness, no
jeremyjh 7y ago
In a study like that would half the participants still be in the control group?
- refurb 7y ago
  Infecting, or at least exposing, healthy, unvaccinated, people with the virus? Pretty sure that would never make it past an IRB review.

twomoretime 7y ago

If one had strong reasons to suspect a mechanism by which a vaccine could actually be deadly or fatal, but this mechanism had not been verified explicitly in literature, would they be ethically obligated to warn participants in advance?

chemeng 7y ago
If there is reason to believe it presents a material risk to their health and well-being. Yes.
dehrmann 7y ago
Is this a rhetorical question?

Gatsky 7y ago

Maybe there will be a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, but the one lesson to take away from all this is that if a truly terrible pandemic hits (eg more contagious than SARS-CoV-2 but with a 10%+ mortality rate) a vaccine won’t save us. I’m not sure what will. Relying on the source country to quickly identify an outbreak and raise the alarm obviously isn’t going to work...

tluyben2 7y ago
We never have been here before in almost everyone’s lifetime; there are a few over 100 year old people who did ofcourse, but that is it. As with wars on your own soil, people forget fast. In Asia my HK colleagues got stressed in january as they did see this before and they (the people without the gov) already automatically took more care. If this occurs ‘soonish’, I think a lot of people and countries will act differently; I know I will. I was still travelling as, silly me, trusted my gov to warn me; big mistake. I would have wanted to self isolate a month earlier to make sure; next time that will happen. I hope there will not be a next time. Obviously the issue is, as with everything that relates to the effectiveness of education on most people, how to teach future generations to not be so lax. I am not sure how that would work. It does not work generally or with a massive delay; exactly like the parent trying to save the child from making the same mistakes as she did but the child having the need not to listen (old people, what do they know he, world changed and such!) and experience all the crap themselves instead. I think, even with a far worse virus, if all countries would’ve shut all borders with china and self quarantined immediately begin january, nothing would happen. Just everyone, every gov and person, thinks and many keep thinking it is all blah and nothing will happen to them. Apparently only the firsthand experience of ‘something bad’ (like Boris Johnson) will actually give them perspective. I think this prepared us well for a worse virus for the coming 20 years; however I think after that, it is will drop off and you will be right; most people will be screwed.
- jfoster 7y ago
  > We never have been here before in almost everyone’s lifetime That's not really true. 1957 "Asian Flu" resulted in > 1 million deaths, and 1968 "Hong Kong Flu" resulted ~1 million deaths. Difficult to compare viruses directly, but I would say those were in the vicinity of something like covid-19, which has not yet resulted in even 200k deaths, but certainly had the potential to kill millions of people. (and may yet...)

notechback 7y ago

I get that everyone like to put "we're the first" in their press release but there are already a number of trials, eg house the day before a German company was reportedly starting trials https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/22/world/europe/22reuters-health-coronavirus-vaccine-biontech.html https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/22/world/europe/22re...

punnerud 7y ago
And trials started weeks ago in Norway as well: https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/who-global-corona-study-starts-in-norway/id2695532/ https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/who-global-corona-stud...
- egao1980 7y ago
  Or Russia - https://ria.ru/20200411/1569898745.html https://ria.ru/20200411/1569898745.html
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    (I don't speak Russian, yet) Given how politicized this has gotten, in general for treatment of this virus, I'm not optimistic that we'll be sharing information. Praying I'm wrong.
    - egao1980 7y ago
      Basically on 11 of April they started a trial. Up to today WHO approved for trial 9 potential vaccines made in Russia.
  - egao1980 7y ago
    The new vaccine is good but arcticle title is not.
- tallanvor 7y ago
  The trials in Norway are about treatment, not vaccines.

SCAQTony 7y ago

COVID-19 is a retrovirus, much like HIV. They both have similar s-protein as well. When discovered in 1983 that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS, it took 12-years for an antiviral to reach the market. In the past 37-years, no vaccine has panned out against HIV. As for COVID-19 "Houston, we have a problem."

chimprich 7y ago
COVID-19 is not caused by a retrovirus. Our inability to develop a vaccine for HIV is not very relevant as they are very different viruses. The development of this vaccine has not been from a standing start. From the article: "The Oxford team has already developed a vaccine against Mers, another type of coronavirus, using the same approach - and that had promising results in clinical trials.".
thehappypm 7y ago
HIV, as I understand it, is a really difficult virus in general because it attacks the immune system. Our typical vaccine playbook doesn't really work well against it because our whole playbook depends on a healthy immune system.
cherpa12 7y ago
I believe you are correct. I believe COVID 19 IS in the category of RNA based retroviruses. No one here is saying it is the same thing as AIDS! That's silliness. But tests being rolled out on COVID 19 contain a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). I believe the virus does fall into the retrovirus category; like malaria, AIDS and ebola.

djsumdog 7y ago

How exactly are vaccines made? Like how do you make a brand new one? For smallpox, the first vaccine came from cowpox (or possibly horsepox). People didn't know what viruses were, but horsepox happened to be similar enough to generate the same antibodies, but not kill people. But I've never seen a good documentary on how vaccines are made for diseases today. YouTube just seems to be filled with professor's lectures from introclasses. Are live viruses used and, if so, how are they made inert yet cause the immune system to generate the same antibodies? Anyone have a documentary with the technical details of any of the modern vaccine generation techniques?

raverbashing 7y ago
Maybe not a documentary but I remember seeing some discussions on Reddit But basically it's more complicated than the usual "attenuated live virus/dead virus". Tou can have synthetic vaccines, targeting different parts of the virus. Also there are several ways of attenuating pathogens (look up the bcg vaccine for one interesting example)
Gibbon1 7y ago
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/coronavirus-vaccine-prospects https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/co... Doesn't answer your question but hints at the complexity.
HillRat 7y ago
Basically, there are three primary approaches to safely introducing antigens to the immune system: you can inactivate (or kill) a virus through methods such as heat treatment; you can attenuate it (make it less well-adapted to humans) by introducing it into foreign hosts until its adaptive mutations make it safe for humans; or you can synthesize molecular antigenic subunits and introduce those on a viral carrier or with chemicals to stimulate an immune response. Experience with inactivated SARS vaccines suggests that protection is incomplete and, worse yet, the vaccines trigger immunopathic responses that can cause serious damage. Most focus is on subunit vaccines, but s-protein-based vaccines in feline coronavirus have been shown to actually worsen the effects of reinfection, so researchers are understandably cautious.

neuronic 7y ago

So 2 days ago, we received the news that the first human trials on a vaccines by a biotech firm from Mainz have gotten approval by the Paul Ehrlich Institute [1] as well in Germany. Good news, let's all work together to kick this things ass! Source [German News]: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundheit/coronavirus-impfstoff-deutschland-biontech-1.4884844 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundheit/coronavirus-impfstoff... Main source [PEI, English]: https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/press-releases/year/2020/08-first-clinical-trial-sars-cov-2-germany.html https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/press-releases/year/2020/08-f... [1] a federal institute for vaccines

Madmallard 7y ago

They tried corona virus vaccines already after the first SARS outbreak. When patients were re-exposed to the virus they had severe auto-immune lung pathologies. Sounds super problematic. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3335060/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3335060/ https://jvi.asm.org/content/85/23/12201 https://jvi.asm.org/content/85/23/12201 https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23563-threatwatch-could-a-mers-vaccine-make-people-sicker/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23563-threatwatch-cou...

tinus_hn 7y ago
Note that in the reports mentioned, the ‘patients’ are mice and ferrets.

hans_castorp 7y ago

Germany started trials on April 22nd using a vaccine named BNT162. Apparently with non-infected people first.

royletron 7y ago

My partner is taking part in the trial in Oxford. So far there was a bit of an anomaly on her blood work so they're bringing in her in for another round of tests but I'm happy to ask her to share (or allow me to share by proxy) her experience. Obviously she has no idea whether she is in the control group or not.

robbyt 7y ago
Are they receiving any compensation?
- tim333 7y ago
  I don't think so. Travel expenses refunded I think.
- KaiserPro 7y ago
  From what I recall, its ~500 pounds
- jjar 7y ago
  Here's the information sheet - https://www.covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk/participate-trial-oxford https://www.covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk/participate-trial-oxfo... > If you participate in the study until the end, you will receive a total payment of between £190-625, dependent on group. My housemate hoped to take part but was not selected.
- royletron 7y ago
  It'll depend how far she progresses but the range of £150-£600 is what we have been told

justlexi93 7y ago

I just hope that this won't make the situation worst and that it will work. I can't wait for this pandemic to be over, I really miss my old life. Moving on stay home people.