7 ms·

Complete protection by single dose skin patch delivered SARS-CoV-2 spike vaccine

91 points by femto 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
irjustin 5y ago
Very cool stuff. I'm still most bullish on the pill variant[0] for adoption, but more methods are always welcomed. Anything to get our adoption rates up! [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/27/pfizer-at-home-covid-pill-could-be-available-by-year-end-ceo-albert-bourla-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/27/pfizer-at-home-covid-pill-co...
- evil-olive 5y ago
  It sounds like that pill variant is an anti-viral treatment, not a vaccine, though. Still an excellent development, but it would complement vaccination rather than competing with it.
  - selcuka 5y ago
    I think it's a necessary development as it might help anti-vaccine people.
    - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
      Huh, surely only a little subset of that group would refuse injection and agree to take a pill? You can probably only make them take it when you ground the pill up in their BBQ sauce or Kale juice or something similar...
      - qwerty1234599 5y ago
        Nope, the main reason for being anti-vaxx seriously is being (subconsciously) scared of needles. These people have no problem with taking pills lol.
        vmception 5y ago
        At this point many of them believe that anyone with vaccine induced immunity is a spike protein factory which they believe causes infertility, the only solution being to socially distance from vaccined people forever and wear masks (This is hilarious and so obviously a counterintel campaign, the FBI and others have a history[1] and mandate of infiltrating groups and steering them into compliance with more absurd information [1] https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro)
      - selcuka 5y ago
        No, but even though they don't want to get vaccinated while they are healthy, most of them have no issue taking a pill after they get sick. Only a small portion of them are nutjobs and most are just unnecessarily cautious.
- linusw 5y ago
  Your [0] sounds great as a treatment if it works, and complementary to vaccines for prevention. The paper is about a vaccine slapped on your skin ("This delivers the vaccine directly to the dermal and upper dermal layers of the skin"). Along those lines, some other interesting companies in early stages are: * Inovio - skin-based, but with a special device - https://www.inovio.com/our-focus-serving-patients/covid-19/ https://www.inovio.com/our-focus-serving-patients/covid-19/ * Vaxart - oral pill - https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/vaxart-vaccine-cross-activity/ https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/vaxart-vaccin..., https://vaxart.com/tablet-vaccines/ https://vaxart.com/tablet-vaccines/ * ImmunityBio - oral/sublingual/subcutaneous injection/combo - https://immunitybio.com/covid-19/ https://immunitybio.com/covid-19/, https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/01/12/2156927/0/en/iosBio-signs-exclusive-worldwide-licensing-agreement-granting-ImmunityBio-rights-to-OraPro-oral-vaccine-platform-technology-for-COVID-19.html https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/01/12/215692... (some of their papers also compare against intramuscular versions of their drug, but they appear to want to avoid big needles and have some means of injecting just below the skin, but not as shallow as this HD-MAP approach it seems) * Oravax Medical - oral - https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210324/clinical-trials-planned-for-oral-covid-19-vaccine https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021032... / https://www.ora-vax.com https://www.ora-vax.com * Aeterna Zentaris - oral - https://www.zentaris.com/oral-coronavirus-vaccine https://www.zentaris.com/oral-coronavirus-vaccine, but this is still pre-clinical. This site https://covid-19tracker.milkeninstitute.org/#vaccines_intro https://covid-19tracker.milkeninstitute.org/#vaccines_intro also mentions two other oral-based companies, but either they don't have any explicit info on progress or they haven't been mentioned since early 2020: - Applied Biotechnology Institute - http://www.appliedbiotech.org/research-development/products-in-development http://www.appliedbiotech.org/research-development/products-... - Migal Galilee Research Institute - https://www.migal.org.il/en/coronavirus-vaccine-project https://www.migal.org.il/en/coronavirus-vaccine-project, https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-made-oral-vaccine-for-coronavirus-on-track-but-testing-will-take-months/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-made-oral-vaccine-for-... (since the main website still says in-vivo in 90 days, I'm guessing there was a halt in development.) If the Milken Institute is up-to-date, Inovio should be furthest along (prepping phase 3), followed by ImmunityBio (phase 1/2). Anyone succeeding would be a wonderful addition for the world!
- m-p-3 5y ago
  I have a friend that is really scared of needles, and an alternative mean of delivery would be really appreciated for her. She managed to go over her fear for the COVID-19 vaccine, but it took her a lot of effort to get there.
IgorPartola 5y ago
Off topic, but I really can’t wait for the approval/EUA for children under 12 to happen because the only people who are still unvaccinated in my family are my kids which to a large degree means we have to keep being very careful. Seems like that age group won’t be able to get vaccinated until October at the earliest and frankly that sucks.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Why? Kids very rarely get seriously ill from COVID-19, and if everyone else is vaccinated they should be safe as well.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    They don't need to get seriously ill from it - they'll contract it and then carry it home to their caregivers. Schools can be considered continuous super-spreader events.
    - praveenperera 5y ago
      The care givers who are vaccinated by now? Kids weren’t even shown to be to be too infectious. No vaccine is 100% safe, it’s very possible the risks of vaccinating kids outweighs the rewards.
      - cma 5y ago
        >No vaccine is 100% safe Is the virus 100% safe? Weigh them against each other and account for who the kids could spread it to, how much vaccine uptake there is, immune compromised they could spread it to who can't be protected well from the vaccine, etc.
        Grustaf 5y ago
sp332 5y ago
Does this mean there is no carrier virus? You just apply the spike proteins directly to the skin?
- adzm 5y ago
  There isn't a carrier virus for the mRNA shots either. It appears that is how this works. Check out HD-MAP for more info on the patch technology too
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    But is the patch introducing mRNA or the spike protein itself? It sounded like the latter (though I only read the abstract).
  - sp332 5y ago
    Hm, does that mean the side effects would be expected to be about the same as the vaccines we have already? I'm worried that regular boosters will be an extremely hard sell if so many people get sick for days after each one.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      I think they made the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines extra strong (and double dose) because we were in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. Would've been still somewhat effective at lower dosage. Folks have tested Pfizer at lower dose, and it seems to work still. But being high dose and double dose probably has also helped protect well against variants.
      - SllX 5y ago
        > I think they made the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines extra strong (and double dose) because we were in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. Was looking into Pfizer’s effectiveness against the Indian variant since that seemed to be the most worrisome one out there and this was the vaccine I got. What it boils down to: 1 shot + 3 weeks: 33% effective. 2 shots + 2 weeks: 88% effective. https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210525/pfizer-astrazeneca-vaccines-indian-variant-study https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021052... Happy to have gotten both shots of Pfizer as overkill looks like exactly the right amount of kill. If I can get boosters down the line in the form of a patch, all the better really.
ac29 5y ago
Sounds like a cool technology - basically 5000 very tiny needles instead of one standard one (though conventional vaccine needles have gotten very small). I wonder how much it costs to manufacture.
benjaminjt 5y ago
The University of Queensland website has a nice summary [0] if you're in a hurry: > The University of Texas Hexapro vaccine candidate – delivered via the UQ-developed and Vaxxas-commercialised high-density microarray patch (HD-MAP) – provided protection against COVID-19 disease with a single, pain-free ‘click’ from a pocket-sized applicator. [0] https://stories.uq.edu.au/news/2021/needle-free-covid-19-vaccine-shows-promise/index.html https://stories.uq.edu.au/news/2021/needle-free-covid-19-vac...
doubtfuluser 5y ago
While I appreciate biotech articles being on hacker news, this one is nothing I would expect on the frontage. Three of the authors have interest in the company that makes HD-map. This in combination with being linked as a preprint without peer review makes me look twice. The wording „complete protection“ does the rest. Does anyone have information if this was ever peer reviewed?
- ghotli 5y ago
  This stuff is important. Thanks for pointing it out.
- Proven 5y ago
  All true. But also not worse than (proven) lies that spread by Dr Fauci over this site, so I'd say it's well within HN-accepted norms and standards.
- Fomite 5y ago
  Given it was posted May 31st, 2021 it's at best weeks away from completed peer review, and realistically with the timelines of COVID-19 papers these days, months.
- pepperberg 5y ago
  BioNTech/Pfizer published a press release regarding 94% efficacy in November 2020 (1 month before publishing any study) and it too landed on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135984
  - evandijk70 5y ago
    Completely different - They are a large company with a proven track record and a lot to lose if they incorrectly claim efficacy. They were reporting on the results of a registered clinical trial with 30,000 subjects. This shows results for ~ 48 transgenic mice. I would say that, at the time, the vaccine reported in the press release from Pfizer had a 99% chance of being approved by FDA, while this vaccine has maybe a 10% chance of being approved by the FDA at best.
vixen99 5y ago
Complete protection? Does this mean that the reports of deaths following fully vaccinated people are incorrect or does this skin patch provide some extra protection sufficient to warrant the word 'complete'?
mathw 5y ago
As a total needlephobe, I'm very glad about this kind of research. I hope such delivery methods become standard in the future. I'm not particularly looking forward to a repeated freakout before my second dose of Pfizer's nonetheless awesome vaccine.
mleonhard 5y ago
"Innate local response and tissue recovery following application of high density microarray patches to human skin" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75169-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75169-4 That is a paper about the patch. It's an array of 3,000 micro-needles. The needles are coated with dry vaccine. The needles destroy many cells during application, which increases the body's immune response and uptake of the vaccine. The dry vaccines do not spoil as easily as the liquid ones. I recall seeing injections of dry medicine powder many years ago in rural West Africa. The nurse first used a sterile syringe to draw sterile water from a vial, injected it into a new medicine vial, withdrew the syringe, shook the vial and let it sit for a minute, and then drew the liquid medicine suspension and injected it into the patient. Are any injectable covid vaccines distributed as dry powder?
xwdv 5y ago
What we need is some sort of misting system where a vaccine could be made airborne and automatically respirated into the lungs of people passing by. Therefore people would automatically become vaccinated just by frequenting areas of social gathering.

91 points by femto 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Very cool stuff. I'm still most bullish on the pill variant[0] for adoption, but more methods are always welcomed. Anything to get our adoption rates up! [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/27/pfizer-at-home-covid-pill-could-be-available-by-year-end-ceo-albert-bourla-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/27/pfizer-at-home-covid-pill-co...

evil-olive 5y ago
It sounds like that pill variant is an anti-viral treatment, not a vaccine, though. Still an excellent development, but it would complement vaccination rather than competing with it.
- selcuka 5y ago
  I think it's a necessary development as it might help anti-vaccine people.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    Huh, surely only a little subset of that group would refuse injection and agree to take a pill? You can probably only make them take it when you ground the pill up in their BBQ sauce or Kale juice or something similar...
    - qwerty1234599 5y ago
      Nope, the main reason for being anti-vaxx seriously is being (subconsciously) scared of needles. These people have no problem with taking pills lol.
      - vmception 5y ago
        At this point many of them believe that anyone with vaccine induced immunity is a spike protein factory which they believe causes infertility, the only solution being to socially distance from vaccined people forever and wear masks (This is hilarious and so obviously a counterintel campaign, the FBI and others have a history[1] and mandate of infiltrating groups and steering them into compliance with more absurd information [1] https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro)
    - selcuka 5y ago
      No, but even though they don't want to get vaccinated while they are healthy, most of them have no issue taking a pill after they get sick. Only a small portion of them are nutjobs and most are just unnecessarily cautious.
linusw 5y ago
Your [0] sounds great as a treatment if it works, and complementary to vaccines for prevention. The paper is about a vaccine slapped on your skin ("This delivers the vaccine directly to the dermal and upper dermal layers of the skin"). Along those lines, some other interesting companies in early stages are: * Inovio - skin-based, but with a special device - https://www.inovio.com/our-focus-serving-patients/covid-19/ https://www.inovio.com/our-focus-serving-patients/covid-19/ * Vaxart - oral pill - https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/vaxart-vaccine-cross-activity/ https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/vaxart-vaccin..., https://vaxart.com/tablet-vaccines/ https://vaxart.com/tablet-vaccines/ * ImmunityBio - oral/sublingual/subcutaneous injection/combo - https://immunitybio.com/covid-19/ https://immunitybio.com/covid-19/, https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/01/12/2156927/0/en/iosBio-signs-exclusive-worldwide-licensing-agreement-granting-ImmunityBio-rights-to-OraPro-oral-vaccine-platform-technology-for-COVID-19.html https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/01/12/215692... (some of their papers also compare against intramuscular versions of their drug, but they appear to want to avoid big needles and have some means of injecting just below the skin, but not as shallow as this HD-MAP approach it seems) * Oravax Medical - oral - https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210324/clinical-trials-planned-for-oral-covid-19-vaccine https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021032... / https://www.ora-vax.com https://www.ora-vax.com * Aeterna Zentaris - oral - https://www.zentaris.com/oral-coronavirus-vaccine https://www.zentaris.com/oral-coronavirus-vaccine, but this is still pre-clinical. This site https://covid-19tracker.milkeninstitute.org/#vaccines_intro https://covid-19tracker.milkeninstitute.org/#vaccines_intro also mentions two other oral-based companies, but either they don't have any explicit info on progress or they haven't been mentioned since early 2020: - Applied Biotechnology Institute - http://www.appliedbiotech.org/research-development/products-in-development http://www.appliedbiotech.org/research-development/products-... - Migal Galilee Research Institute - https://www.migal.org.il/en/coronavirus-vaccine-project https://www.migal.org.il/en/coronavirus-vaccine-project, https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-made-oral-vaccine-for-coronavirus-on-track-but-testing-will-take-months/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-made-oral-vaccine-for-... (since the main website still says in-vivo in 90 days, I'm guessing there was a halt in development.) If the Milken Institute is up-to-date, Inovio should be furthest along (prepping phase 3), followed by ImmunityBio (phase 1/2). Anyone succeeding would be a wonderful addition for the world!
m-p-3 5y ago
I have a friend that is really scared of needles, and an alternative mean of delivery would be really appreciated for her. She managed to go over her fear for the COVID-19 vaccine, but it took her a lot of effort to get there.

IgorPartola 5y ago

Off topic, but I really can’t wait for the approval/EUA for children under 12 to happen because the only people who are still unvaccinated in my family are my kids which to a large degree means we have to keep being very careful. Seems like that age group won’t be able to get vaccinated until October at the earliest and frankly that sucks.

throwawayboise 5y ago
Why? Kids very rarely get seriously ill from COVID-19, and if everyone else is vaccinated they should be safe as well.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Karunamon 5y ago
  They don't need to get seriously ill from it - they'll contract it and then carry it home to their caregivers. Schools can be considered continuous super-spreader events.
  - praveenperera 5y ago
    The care givers who are vaccinated by now? Kids weren’t even shown to be to be too infectious. No vaccine is 100% safe, it’s very possible the risks of vaccinating kids outweighs the rewards.
    - cma 5y ago
      >No vaccine is 100% safe Is the virus 100% safe? Weigh them against each other and account for who the kids could spread it to, how much vaccine uptake there is, immune compromised they could spread it to who can't be protected well from the vaccine, etc.
      - Grustaf 5y ago

sp332 5y ago

Does this mean there is no carrier virus? You just apply the spike proteins directly to the skin?

adzm 5y ago
There isn't a carrier virus for the mRNA shots either. It appears that is how this works. Check out HD-MAP for more info on the patch technology too
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  But is the patch introducing mRNA or the spike protein itself? It sounded like the latter (though I only read the abstract).
- sp332 5y ago
  Hm, does that mean the side effects would be expected to be about the same as the vaccines we have already? I'm worried that regular boosters will be an extremely hard sell if so many people get sick for days after each one.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    I think they made the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines extra strong (and double dose) because we were in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. Would've been still somewhat effective at lower dosage. Folks have tested Pfizer at lower dose, and it seems to work still. But being high dose and double dose probably has also helped protect well against variants.
    - SllX 5y ago
      > I think they made the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines extra strong (and double dose) because we were in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. Was looking into Pfizer’s effectiveness against the Indian variant since that seemed to be the most worrisome one out there and this was the vaccine I got. What it boils down to: 1 shot + 3 weeks: 33% effective. 2 shots + 2 weeks: 88% effective. https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210525/pfizer-astrazeneca-vaccines-indian-variant-study https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021052... Happy to have gotten both shots of Pfizer as overkill looks like exactly the right amount of kill. If I can get boosters down the line in the form of a patch, all the better really.

ac29 5y ago

Sounds like a cool technology - basically 5000 very tiny needles instead of one standard one (though conventional vaccine needles have gotten very small). I wonder how much it costs to manufacture.

benjaminjt 5y ago

The University of Queensland website has a nice summary [0] if you're in a hurry: > The University of Texas Hexapro vaccine candidate – delivered via the UQ-developed and Vaxxas-commercialised high-density microarray patch (HD-MAP) – provided protection against COVID-19 disease with a single, pain-free ‘click’ from a pocket-sized applicator. [0] https://stories.uq.edu.au/news/2021/needle-free-covid-19-vaccine-shows-promise/index.html https://stories.uq.edu.au/news/2021/needle-free-covid-19-vac...

doubtfuluser 5y ago

While I appreciate biotech articles being on hacker news, this one is nothing I would expect on the frontage. Three of the authors have interest in the company that makes HD-map. This in combination with being linked as a preprint without peer review makes me look twice. The wording „complete protection“ does the rest. Does anyone have information if this was ever peer reviewed?

ghotli 5y ago
This stuff is important. Thanks for pointing it out.
Proven 5y ago
All true. But also not worse than (proven) lies that spread by Dr Fauci over this site, so I'd say it's well within HN-accepted norms and standards.
Fomite 5y ago
Given it was posted May 31st, 2021 it's at best weeks away from completed peer review, and realistically with the timelines of COVID-19 papers these days, months.
pepperberg 5y ago
BioNTech/Pfizer published a press release regarding 94% efficacy in November 2020 (1 month before publishing any study) and it too landed on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135984
- evandijk70 5y ago
  Completely different - They are a large company with a proven track record and a lot to lose if they incorrectly claim efficacy. They were reporting on the results of a registered clinical trial with 30,000 subjects. This shows results for ~ 48 transgenic mice. I would say that, at the time, the vaccine reported in the press release from Pfizer had a 99% chance of being approved by FDA, while this vaccine has maybe a 10% chance of being approved by the FDA at best.

vixen99 5y ago

Complete protection? Does this mean that the reports of deaths following fully vaccinated people are incorrect or does this skin patch provide some extra protection sufficient to warrant the word 'complete'?

mathw 5y ago

As a total needlephobe, I'm very glad about this kind of research. I hope such delivery methods become standard in the future. I'm not particularly looking forward to a repeated freakout before my second dose of Pfizer's nonetheless awesome vaccine.

mleonhard 5y ago

"Innate local response and tissue recovery following application of high density microarray patches to human skin" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75169-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75169-4 That is a paper about the patch. It's an array of 3,000 micro-needles. The needles are coated with dry vaccine. The needles destroy many cells during application, which increases the body's immune response and uptake of the vaccine. The dry vaccines do not spoil as easily as the liquid ones. I recall seeing injections of dry medicine powder many years ago in rural West Africa. The nurse first used a sterile syringe to draw sterile water from a vial, injected it into a new medicine vial, withdrew the syringe, shook the vial and let it sit for a minute, and then drew the liquid medicine suspension and injected it into the patient. Are any injectable covid vaccines distributed as dry powder?

xwdv 5y ago

What we need is some sort of misting system where a vaccine could be made airborne and automatically respirated into the lungs of people passing by. Therefore people would automatically become vaccinated just by frequenting areas of social gathering.