4 ms·
I have no knowledge of this but if injecting spike proteins worked wouldn’t we just always do that? Seems like way easier than the rest of the delivery mechanis
by IgorPartola 6y ago
I have no knowledge of this but if injecting spike proteins worked wouldn’t we just always do that? Seems like way easier than the rest of the delivery mechanism.
- newdude116 6y agoYes, but it is still a legit question.
- roywiggins 6y agoThe AstraZeneca vaccine puts the spike protein onto a chimp cold virus. My understanding is that the hard part is to make the body understand that it needs to produce an immune response. Just injecting spike protein doesn't work, because it isn't recognized as a threat. The AstraZeneca one uses an attenuated virus that the body is going to respond to anyway. I believe the mRNA vaccines work by getting cells to express the spike protein themselves. You can't smuggle the protein into cells just by injecting it, but mRNA will get in there and do its thing.
- inglor_cz 6y agoWhenever you inject foreign biological material, you have to avoid two scenarios: a) the scenario when the foreign material is immediately degraded by enzymes or other mechanism, before actually accomplishing anything, b) the scenario when the foreign material causes massive immune reaction in form of inflammation, potentially killing the host. AFAIK navigating between those two extremes took decades during development of RNA vaccines. But now it seems that we can avoid both.