4 ms·
A Malaria vaccine would be awesome. I have no idea if that’s possible though. I’ve known people with Malaria and have personally taken the (expensive) pills to
by cyberlurker 6y ago
A Malaria vaccine would be awesome. I have no idea if that’s possible though. I’ve known people with Malaria and have personally taken the (expensive) pills to protect myself. It all sucks.
- notriddle 6y agoMalaria is a parasite, not a virus. Doesn't it have to be a virus for mRNA vaccines to make sense?
- rst 6y agoThere are vaccines against bacterial infections (tuberculosis, for example).
- Vecr 6y agoThe tuberculosis vaccine might not be the best example, it lacks efficacy in some places, for an unknown reason or reasons, such as the US and India.
- selimthegrim 6y agoDoes India still use BCG?
- valarauko 6y agoYes, India still uses BCG.
- WalterSear 6y agoIt doesn't even have to be an exogenous disease. There are trials being scheduled for their use in autoimmune disease, IIRC, by sensitizing tnf-regulator cells to autoantigens (or perhaps consequent interleukins, I forget). The have already been used to cure the mouse model of MS.
- Fomite 6y agoNope! Just needs to be something with a stable, targetable antigen.
- aledalgrande 6y agoNot virus only, Moderna is working on a mRNA therapy for cancer for example. [1] [1] https://www.modernatx.com/pipeline/therapeutic-areas/mrna-personalized-cancer-vaccines-and-immuno-oncology https://www.modernatx.com/pipeline/therapeutic-areas/mrna-pe...
- inglor_cz 6y agoA mRNA vaccine basically sics our immune systems on something. Our immune systems are fairly adaptable and will kill even cancer cells if they can tell them apart from healthy tissue.
- amluto 6y agoThe hard part about vaccinating against Malaria isn’t the vaccine platform — it’s finding an antigen to target that has the desired effect. But there is progress on that front: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/03/01/a-malaria-vaccine-candidate https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/03/01/a-... The candidate does indeed use mRNA, but it seems like it could have used older technology too.