14 ms·

Moderna will develop mRNA vaccines for some of the world’s worst diseases

218 points by RafelMri 5y ago

idontwantthis 5y ago
Is that really possible with dengue? The vaccine exists now, but it might actually make you more sick. I live in a country where dengue is a horrible threat, so that would be amazing.
- dhosek 5y ago
  Yes. Dengvaxia is a traditional vaccine which uses weakened virus (and which is why it should only be used on people who've been previously infected). The way mRNA vaccines work is that they tell the cells' ribosomes to manufacture a protein segment from the virus which then triggers the immune response by the cells so that the cells are prepared for the actual arrival of the virus. The article goes into this with more clarity, depth and accuracy than my capsule summary above.
  - idontwantthis 5y ago
    Yes that's how it works in general, but the article lists dengue and doesn't explain why a protein segment would be safer than what we have now.
    - arrosenberg 5y ago
      Current vaccine is an actual virus, just a weakened (attenuated) version. mRNA vaccine causes your body to create the proteins that your immune system can target if it encounters the actual virus. That allows your immune system to train on the targets without introducing an actual virus. The mRNA version doesn't have the ability to infect a cell and use it to reproduce, it ONLY triggers the immune system.
    - TacticalMalice 5y ago
      By eliciting responses against specific parts of a specific protein that minimizes the production of antibodies that bind to, but not neutralize denguevirus. See also https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33194810/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33194810/ .
  - refurb 5y ago
    Yes but the problem with dengue is antibody mediated enhancement. Basically people develop antibodies that make future infections worse by potential infections the infectious proteins. The challenge is not creating a vaccine that stimulates an immune response, the challenge is avoiding a response that makes things worse.
    - jcims 5y ago
      No idea really but maybe there are specific proteins in the virus that are responsible for this behavior that could be omitted from the vaccine while still finding an effective surface feature to work against? > The challenge is not creating a vaccine that stimulates an immune response, the challenge is avoiding a response that makes things worse. Agreed. This is probably always true, there’s just more concrete evidence of this potential outcome with dengue.
    - mise_en_place 5y ago
      If you never had dengue before, wouldn’t you always have the same response due to vaccine mediated original antigenic sin?
      - refurb 5y ago
        It’s been a while since my immunology courses, but I’ll give it a go. Antibody response is not necessarily the same, even in the same person with the same antigen. The immune system basically creates a ton of random antibodies and when they “hit” on the previously unseen antigen, they are amplified. Now once someone has had an immune response and generated memory cells, then yes, very similar antigens (that somewhat bind to the exist ones the body made prior) will tend to “narrow down” the antibodies generated to varieties of the original one (the immune system basically says ‘these old antibodies are close, so let’s create variation off them to optimize the new ones’). Then the other thing to consider is that there are different strains of dengue - so you could get type A, generate a response, but then exposed to type B where your type A antibodies activate the infection mechanism rather than disable it.
- sergiomattei 5y ago
  Dengue is the worst. I got hemorrhagic dengue last year and it knocked me on my ass for good. I’m thankful I had access to good healthcare, otherwise I wouldn’t have had good luck with it. I also had Chikungunya virus once when I was little. Not fun. We need to eradicate these diseases for good.
mhh__ 5y ago
Can't wait for these vaccines to cause a bizarre and ever-changing set of symptoms that will conveniently dissappear as the contrarians get bored on Twitter.
- bitlax 5y ago
  1. The tech platforms finally reneged on their promise to be free speech havens and took an explicitly pro-vaccine stance, suppressing accurate information and promoting disinformation in the process. 2. The anti-this-particular-vaxxers for the most part have won. Vaccine and mask mandates have been dropped just about everywhere. 3. COVID's over, baby. You guys talk about Ukraine now.
WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
netheril96 5y ago
When mRNA vaccines were invented, I was told that it had the advantage that a mRNA vaccine can be easily modified so as to be effective against a mutated virus. Yet after so many mutations of covid, all we have is still the original version of covid mRNA vaccine. Why?
- JamesBarney 5y ago
  A couple of reasons 1. It's still pretty effective against COVID 2. Clinical trials showed variant specific versions weren't that much more effective 3. Protecting against the granddaddy strain has a much broader effect than protecting against a new strain.
  - tempestn 5y ago
    Are you sure about #3? That vast majority of cases now are Omicron, so new variants are far more likely to branch off of Omicron than an earlier strain. Therefore I can't imagine how a vaccine targeting the original spike protein would be expected to be more effective than one targeting the spike protein from Omicron against new variants.
    - samus 5y ago
      Let's say we wait until only 1 out of 10000 cases world-wide is caused by a non-Omicron strain. Then, an Omikron-specific booster would be worth it. Otherwise, we are just playing whack-a-mole with other strains.
      - jagger27 5y ago
        What if we had multivalent mRNA vaccines like the HPV vaccine? Gardasil first covered three different strains, then later was bumped to nine, hence Gardasil-9. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
        samus 5y ago
        HPV viruses are DNA viruses, which means they evolve way slower than Corona viruses. This makes it easier to identify strains that are worth developing a vaccine against. Also, the mRNA technology and/or the production lines are probably not yet capable of producing multivalent vaccines.
twofornone 5y ago
We're injecting people with rna that induces viral fragment production in human cells. And typically these proteins tend to be inflammatory, they have to be to stimulate the immune system, no? It won't surprise me to hear down the line that something subtle went wrong in a sizeable proportion of injectees, and that maybe we rushed into this without taking the time to gather longer term data. Think long term immune disorders, which are difficult to diagnose, especially early on. It wouldn't exactly be the first time we've screwed up.
- robbiep 5y ago
  We’re doing exactly the same as we’re doing with traditional vaccines, but more efficiently. There’s a lot about your comment that misses the subtleties and mechanics of how the immune system works and repeats fears that, quite frankly, stem from ideologically driven falsehoods.
  - ankurdhama 5y ago
    How is it same? I thought traditional vaccines are about injecting the diluted viral load to trigger immune response whereas mRNA vaccine is about injecting rna fragment that hijack your body cell to make the foreign protein to trigger immune response. Isn't the whole mechanism different?
    - bawolff 5y ago
      > I thought traditional vaccines are about injecting the diluted viral load Umm,no. I guess live vaccines are kind of like that, but its still a misleading description, and most "traditional" vaccines aren't live vaccines.
    - tjpnz 5y ago
      Your original comment was regarding the immune system, in that vein there is no difference in how it trains itself to recognise the inactive virus versus the spike protein made in the body.
    - TacticalMalice 5y ago
foolfoolz 5y ago
moderna has invented a vaccine platform on mrna. they started with covid and have proven they can target diseases using this platform. so keeping the delivery mechanism the same, they are targeting many other diseases. but was it successful? the covid vaccine loses effectiveness after 8-12 weeks. i don’t know if this is specific to sars-cov-2 and it’s mutations or the mrna delivery platform.
- christophilus 5y ago
  If they can do for other diseases what they did for COVID— significantly reducing severity— it’d be a huge win even if it wasn’t inoculating.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  It's more that sars-cov-2 is just a nasty virus with exceptionally good skills at evading the immune system, not that mRNA vaccine tech doesn't work after a few months. From what I understand covid-19 can suppress the immune system response and replicate before your body can really detect or react to it. It's only if you have a recent supply of covid-19 spike protein antibodies floating around your blood, like if you were recently vaccinated/boosted, that your immune system can get a faster alarm and head start at clearing a real infection. So really any vaccine mRNA or not that's targeting the spike protein is going to see similar waning efficacy against infection. We see this with the Johnson and Johnson and Astrazenica shots which don't use mRNA tech for example.
- bawolff 5y ago
  The wanning effectiveness was still going from "amazing" to "just ok". "Just ok" is still a really big impact and a lot more than nothing, so its not like it becomes worthless or anything.
- noahtallen 5y ago
  Another counterexample is the flu vaccine. It never purports to eradicate flu, but it helps with the season. The unfortunate reality is that some diseases change and evolve quickly enough that the immune system can’t defeat every new variant, even with bolstered protection against previous ones. Like you’ll catch a cold from time to time, or perhaps the flu. The immunity you developed previously didn’t stop that because the disease evolved.
DantesKite 5y ago
So amazing. Hopeful they'll eventually expand to include many other diseases.
vbilopav 5y ago
- mushyhammer 5y ago
  How do you find the novax in a room? They'll tell you.
  - WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
- halotrope 5y ago
  Your comment does not add anything to the discussion and reflects poorly on you. Maybe you want to elaborate a bit what the issue with these vaccines is?
  - oblio 5y ago
    Fear of change.
  - WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
  - argvargc 5y ago
    Not the OP, but since publication, serious concerns detailed in this paper by the MIT researcher (who played a major role in early determination of the risks of glyphosate), have since been indepedently verified: https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/23/51 https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/23/51 For example, this recent Swedish paper detailing in-vitro DNA modification (reverse transcription) by COVID-19 vaccine mRNA, in human liver cells: https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73/htm https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73/htm And this is just one of many concerns (and the above paper isn't the only verification of that particular concern). For example the proprietary lipids fascilitating the entry of the mRNA into cells have been shown to exhibit high cytotoxicity. Coupled with ongoing legal revelations as a result of FOIA requests - https://phmpt.org https://phmpt.org - regarding what the FDA knew about the safety profile of the shots, versus what they told the public at the time, along with FDA's otherwise bizarre reticence to release such data that is clearly in the publics interest, these shots are seeming less and less "safe and effective" by the day. (Lawyer Aaron Siri does some write ups regarding this FDA case.) Indeed, it's common knowledge now the "effective" part was mishandled, so it shouldn't be surprising - especially, in a social and media climate actively preventing emergent negative signals - that it might turn out safety was mishandled also.
colordrops 5y ago
Some of these diseases are not so common. What about diseases like herpes or epstein barr? They don't usually kill but cause endless suffering for billions of people. There is some evidence they can even lead to cancer and dementia.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  Here’s a thread and subreddit on all the efforts for herpes: https://www.reddit.com/r/HerpesCureResearch/comments/kg66ds/latest_research_updates_especially_for_new_joiners/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HerpesCureResearch/comments/kg66ds/...
  - bawolff 5y ago
    Huh. They are crowdfunduing vaccine research? That seems a bit red flag. I would assume if it was actually promising, given the potential market, that funding would be easy to come by. Am i missing something here?
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      On the other hand, if they needed $500k, this is well within the budget of popular crowd funding projects, and it seemed like they have succeeded. As far as I know they raised the funds so I guess the strategy was sound. I don’t know the details but often crowd funding allows the creators to keep all IP rights, which would give them more freedom than going through institutional investors.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  You are downvoted I guess because of the not common sentence (not exactly sure as you even say some of them)? But I only heard of epstein barr from House (or ER, not entirely sure; some US show anyway) and started reading; seems herpes is connecting all these (at least here) puberty things like mono and different types of herpes and indeed ebv. They all apparently are herpes viruses and indeed, like you say can cause an array of cancers (dementia I could not find but the cancer link was made in a lot of scientific and gov papers). So herpes is rather important to destroy as it (and that included ebv) never goes away and 90%+ people have it. Which makes it easy to make the joke ‘these days everything causes cancer’ which is probably true because if you get old enough, you will develop cancer, but it does not mean we should not try to prevent some of the ways it works. So anyway, never thought ebv is common as I never heard of it in my country but that is because it is confused or piled on with mono (seems the symptoms are similar) and I know quite a lot more about herpes in general. So thanks and you are right; let’s do something about it, but also about the other diseases they mention as they are common in some country; all my Vietnam colleagues and their family had Dengue for instance and it is not good.
gwerbret 5y ago
While development of a new vaccine-delivery platform is exciting, I think it's important to take this announcement into perspective. The main problem with producing vaccines is not principally the delivery platform, but the difficulty in generating a sensitive, specific, and effective immune response to your target bug. This problem has plagued immunology for decades (and is a bit of a black art), and sadly may not be solved simply by using mRNA. Nevertheless, promising news. Presumably this is funded at least in part by the significant profits Modena has generated from the COVID vaccine.
needle0 5y ago
C'mon, you can't just throw out a number like that and not provide an exhaustive list of all 15 targeted diseases! The article (and its linked source) mentions Chikungunya, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Dengue, Ebola, Malaria, Marburg, Lassa fever, MERS, and COVID-19. Reading through the articles in depth also reveals mentions of Nipah, HIV, and Tuberculosis. That's 12. So what are the other 3?
- mtoohig 5y ago
  Dengue has 4 "variants". So that may be those are the other 3? The thing with dengue is the first time sucks but catching a second variant is often fatal.
RedShift1 5y ago
Original press release from Moderna: https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moderna-Announces-Its-Global-Public-Health-Strategy/default.aspx https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moder... The targeted diseases are: Chikungunya virus, COVID-19, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, Dengue, Ebola virus disease, HIV, Malaria, Marburg virus disease, Lassa fever, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), Nipah and henipaviral diseases, Rift Valley fever, Severe fever with Thrombocytopenia syndrome, Tuberculosis, Zika
- esyir 5y ago
  Dengue is a disease that vaccination actually makes worse, at least with the ones we have now. I'm wondering how they sidestep those issues.
  - sjmm1989 5y ago
    > As Drew Weissman, one of the physician-scientists who helped develop mRNA vaccine technology put it, “mRNA vaccines are essentially plug and play. We believe you can change the part of the mRNA that encodes a protein, plugging in new code specific to the virus we hope to protect against, and cause one’s body to produce proteins that match that virus’ proteins. We do not have to develop and manufacture an entirely new formula.” I think this quote sufficiently answers your curiosity slightly. Not a lot, but slightly.
    - zpeti 5y ago
      I don’t think it does. With dengue fever the issue is once you develop antibodies the first time, the second time you get infected the antibodies actually increase the viruses chances of binding to whatever it binds to, so the effectiveness of the virus increases. I’m not sure how mRNA vaccines get around that, but I imagine they have a plan, it would be interesting to hear it.
    - esyir 5y ago
      Unfortunately not, I'm aware of how the mrna vaccines work. The issue with dengue in particular is a bit of a special case. Infection with a single serotype weakens the body against infection with other serotypes. Now. This poses a challenge to vaccination, as you need to find a way to get all four. Currently, we have dengvaxia, which does do that. However, an interesting effect is that the vaccination is only useful if you already have a history of dengue. If you're dengue naive, the vaxx increases the risk of severe disease instead.
cf141q5325 5y ago
Can anyone explain to me what exactly changed here? As far as i understand it there was nearly zero development effort necessary for COVID. The stuff was basically sitting on a shelf. Yet if i look at older news coverage, it was already clear that once it works, we will basically get a cancer vaccine soon. edit: The best i can tell its Bayers take on the topic, gene/cell therapy being bad PR. https://youtu.be/OJFKBritLlc?t=5850 https://youtu.be/OJFKBritLlc?t=5850
- throwaway48375 5y ago
  It would have taken many years to get the new technology approved, but we skipped a lot of that due to the pandemic. Now that we have lots of safety data it is easier for them to get new vaccines approved.
  - kuhewa 5y ago
    Most of the years skipped though was red tape, bureaucratic slog, fundraising, clinical trial participant recruiting, and having a high enough absolute risk of infection in the population that it was not long at all to have a significant difference in effect between treatment arms. It probably helps that there's now a well develiped framework for mRNA and adenovirus vector vaccine approval, but ultimately any new antigen could certainly be unsafe and future candidates are going to require every bit as much testing and won't get most of the expeditiory benefits the first generation of COVID vaccines experienced.
- adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
  I think a lot of it is that clinical trials are expensive and drug manufacturers generally try to maximize odds of success. COVID was unique because they could get a ton of money to develop and test a vaccine that they knew there would be a ton of demand for if they were early to market with something that worked. now that they've seen how much easier and cheaper mRNA vaccines can be to develop, it's much easier to decide to start a trial.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  The research was easy, but the development required billions of dollars and literal war-time production efforts (in the US the Defense Production Act was invoked). Drug regulators are also very conservative. Why take risk on making a low-margin mRNA influenza vaccine when other platforms are good enough?
xdennis 5y ago
- risyachka 5y ago
  It is not banned in Europe
  - argvargc 5y ago
    In several places it's been restricted from being used in certain age groups - due to safety - after being previously recommended for those age groups. I believe in at least one or two countries it's been withdrawn entirely. Certainly other vaccines released at the same time and presented as analogous to each other have been - all of which well justifies reluctance on trusting any of this new technology that was initially touted as completely safe, and in many cases still is, even after being withdrawn by government health agencies over safety. What? And for those harmed - there is an understandable addition of anger to the mix.
kylehotchkiss 5y ago
While solving these diseases is a long shot, this is a fantastic tech and financial reinvestment into improving quality of life for all people. I’m excited to see which discoveries they make, even if the MRNA path isn’t the right one for some of these diseases
Traubenfuchs 5y ago
I wonder if they carry the same serious side effect risk of the mRNA covid vaccines that are currently available: (permanent) heart damage, death and persistent long covid like side effects. Maybe a whole new set of them? I would love to get a safe and effective HIV vaccine, but I wouldn‘t take it if it could give me a heart attack!

218 points by RafelMri 5y ago

Is that really possible with dengue? The vaccine exists now, but it might actually make you more sick. I live in a country where dengue is a horrible threat, so that would be amazing.

dhosek 5y ago
Yes. Dengvaxia is a traditional vaccine which uses weakened virus (and which is why it should only be used on people who've been previously infected). The way mRNA vaccines work is that they tell the cells' ribosomes to manufacture a protein segment from the virus which then triggers the immune response by the cells so that the cells are prepared for the actual arrival of the virus. The article goes into this with more clarity, depth and accuracy than my capsule summary above.
- idontwantthis 5y ago
  Yes that's how it works in general, but the article lists dengue and doesn't explain why a protein segment would be safer than what we have now.
  - arrosenberg 5y ago
    Current vaccine is an actual virus, just a weakened (attenuated) version. mRNA vaccine causes your body to create the proteins that your immune system can target if it encounters the actual virus. That allows your immune system to train on the targets without introducing an actual virus. The mRNA version doesn't have the ability to infect a cell and use it to reproduce, it ONLY triggers the immune system.
  - TacticalMalice 5y ago
    By eliciting responses against specific parts of a specific protein that minimizes the production of antibodies that bind to, but not neutralize denguevirus. See also https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33194810/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33194810/ .
- refurb 5y ago
  Yes but the problem with dengue is antibody mediated enhancement. Basically people develop antibodies that make future infections worse by potential infections the infectious proteins. The challenge is not creating a vaccine that stimulates an immune response, the challenge is avoiding a response that makes things worse.
  - jcims 5y ago
    No idea really but maybe there are specific proteins in the virus that are responsible for this behavior that could be omitted from the vaccine while still finding an effective surface feature to work against? > The challenge is not creating a vaccine that stimulates an immune response, the challenge is avoiding a response that makes things worse. Agreed. This is probably always true, there’s just more concrete evidence of this potential outcome with dengue.
  - mise_en_place 5y ago
    If you never had dengue before, wouldn’t you always have the same response due to vaccine mediated original antigenic sin?
    - refurb 5y ago
      It’s been a while since my immunology courses, but I’ll give it a go. Antibody response is not necessarily the same, even in the same person with the same antigen. The immune system basically creates a ton of random antibodies and when they “hit” on the previously unseen antigen, they are amplified. Now once someone has had an immune response and generated memory cells, then yes, very similar antigens (that somewhat bind to the exist ones the body made prior) will tend to “narrow down” the antibodies generated to varieties of the original one (the immune system basically says ‘these old antibodies are close, so let’s create variation off them to optimize the new ones’). Then the other thing to consider is that there are different strains of dengue - so you could get type A, generate a response, but then exposed to type B where your type A antibodies activate the infection mechanism rather than disable it.
sergiomattei 5y ago
Dengue is the worst. I got hemorrhagic dengue last year and it knocked me on my ass for good. I’m thankful I had access to good healthcare, otherwise I wouldn’t have had good luck with it. I also had Chikungunya virus once when I was little. Not fun. We need to eradicate these diseases for good.

mhh__ 5y ago

Can't wait for these vaccines to cause a bizarre and ever-changing set of symptoms that will conveniently dissappear as the contrarians get bored on Twitter.

bitlax 5y ago
1. The tech platforms finally reneged on their promise to be free speech havens and took an explicitly pro-vaccine stance, suppressing accurate information and promoting disinformation in the process. 2. The anti-this-particular-vaxxers for the most part have won. Vaccine and mask mandates have been dropped just about everywhere. 3. COVID's over, baby. You guys talk about Ukraine now.

WaxedChewbacca 5y ago

netheril96 5y ago

When mRNA vaccines were invented, I was told that it had the advantage that a mRNA vaccine can be easily modified so as to be effective against a mutated virus. Yet after so many mutations of covid, all we have is still the original version of covid mRNA vaccine. Why?

JamesBarney 5y ago
A couple of reasons 1. It's still pretty effective against COVID 2. Clinical trials showed variant specific versions weren't that much more effective 3. Protecting against the granddaddy strain has a much broader effect than protecting against a new strain.
- tempestn 5y ago
  Are you sure about #3? That vast majority of cases now are Omicron, so new variants are far more likely to branch off of Omicron than an earlier strain. Therefore I can't imagine how a vaccine targeting the original spike protein would be expected to be more effective than one targeting the spike protein from Omicron against new variants.
  - samus 5y ago
    Let's say we wait until only 1 out of 10000 cases world-wide is caused by a non-Omicron strain. Then, an Omikron-specific booster would be worth it. Otherwise, we are just playing whack-a-mole with other strains.
    - jagger27 5y ago
      What if we had multivalent mRNA vaccines like the HPV vaccine? Gardasil first covered three different strains, then later was bumped to nine, hence Gardasil-9. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
      - samus 5y ago
        HPV viruses are DNA viruses, which means they evolve way slower than Corona viruses. This makes it easier to identify strains that are worth developing a vaccine against. Also, the mRNA technology and/or the production lines are probably not yet capable of producing multivalent vaccines.

twofornone 5y ago

We're injecting people with rna that induces viral fragment production in human cells. And typically these proteins tend to be inflammatory, they have to be to stimulate the immune system, no? It won't surprise me to hear down the line that something subtle went wrong in a sizeable proportion of injectees, and that maybe we rushed into this without taking the time to gather longer term data. Think long term immune disorders, which are difficult to diagnose, especially early on. It wouldn't exactly be the first time we've screwed up.

robbiep 5y ago
We’re doing exactly the same as we’re doing with traditional vaccines, but more efficiently. There’s a lot about your comment that misses the subtleties and mechanics of how the immune system works and repeats fears that, quite frankly, stem from ideologically driven falsehoods.
- ankurdhama 5y ago
  How is it same? I thought traditional vaccines are about injecting the diluted viral load to trigger immune response whereas mRNA vaccine is about injecting rna fragment that hijack your body cell to make the foreign protein to trigger immune response. Isn't the whole mechanism different?
  - bawolff 5y ago
    > I thought traditional vaccines are about injecting the diluted viral load Umm,no. I guess live vaccines are kind of like that, but its still a misleading description, and most "traditional" vaccines aren't live vaccines.
  - tjpnz 5y ago
    Your original comment was regarding the immune system, in that vein there is no difference in how it trains itself to recognise the inactive virus versus the spike protein made in the body.
  - TacticalMalice 5y ago

foolfoolz 5y ago

moderna has invented a vaccine platform on mrna. they started with covid and have proven they can target diseases using this platform. so keeping the delivery mechanism the same, they are targeting many other diseases. but was it successful? the covid vaccine loses effectiveness after 8-12 weeks. i don’t know if this is specific to sars-cov-2 and it’s mutations or the mrna delivery platform.

christophilus 5y ago
If they can do for other diseases what they did for COVID— significantly reducing severity— it’d be a huge win even if it wasn’t inoculating.
qbasic_forever 5y ago
It's more that sars-cov-2 is just a nasty virus with exceptionally good skills at evading the immune system, not that mRNA vaccine tech doesn't work after a few months. From what I understand covid-19 can suppress the immune system response and replicate before your body can really detect or react to it. It's only if you have a recent supply of covid-19 spike protein antibodies floating around your blood, like if you were recently vaccinated/boosted, that your immune system can get a faster alarm and head start at clearing a real infection. So really any vaccine mRNA or not that's targeting the spike protein is going to see similar waning efficacy against infection. We see this with the Johnson and Johnson and Astrazenica shots which don't use mRNA tech for example.
bawolff 5y ago
The wanning effectiveness was still going from "amazing" to "just ok". "Just ok" is still a really big impact and a lot more than nothing, so its not like it becomes worthless or anything.
noahtallen 5y ago
Another counterexample is the flu vaccine. It never purports to eradicate flu, but it helps with the season. The unfortunate reality is that some diseases change and evolve quickly enough that the immune system can’t defeat every new variant, even with bolstered protection against previous ones. Like you’ll catch a cold from time to time, or perhaps the flu. The immunity you developed previously didn’t stop that because the disease evolved.

DantesKite 5y ago

So amazing. Hopeful they'll eventually expand to include many other diseases.

vbilopav 5y ago

mushyhammer 5y ago
How do you find the novax in a room? They'll tell you.
- WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
halotrope 5y ago
Your comment does not add anything to the discussion and reflects poorly on you. Maybe you want to elaborate a bit what the issue with these vaccines is?
- oblio 5y ago
  Fear of change.
- WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
- argvargc 5y ago
  Not the OP, but since publication, serious concerns detailed in this paper by the MIT researcher (who played a major role in early determination of the risks of glyphosate), have since been indepedently verified: https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/23/51 https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/23/51 For example, this recent Swedish paper detailing in-vitro DNA modification (reverse transcription) by COVID-19 vaccine mRNA, in human liver cells: https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73/htm https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73/htm And this is just one of many concerns (and the above paper isn't the only verification of that particular concern). For example the proprietary lipids fascilitating the entry of the mRNA into cells have been shown to exhibit high cytotoxicity. Coupled with ongoing legal revelations as a result of FOIA requests - https://phmpt.org https://phmpt.org - regarding what the FDA knew about the safety profile of the shots, versus what they told the public at the time, along with FDA's otherwise bizarre reticence to release such data that is clearly in the publics interest, these shots are seeming less and less "safe and effective" by the day. (Lawyer Aaron Siri does some write ups regarding this FDA case.) Indeed, it's common knowledge now the "effective" part was mishandled, so it shouldn't be surprising - especially, in a social and media climate actively preventing emergent negative signals - that it might turn out safety was mishandled also.

colordrops 5y ago

Some of these diseases are not so common. What about diseases like herpes or epstein barr? They don't usually kill but cause endless suffering for billions of people. There is some evidence they can even lead to cancer and dementia.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
Here’s a thread and subreddit on all the efforts for herpes: https://www.reddit.com/r/HerpesCureResearch/comments/kg66ds/latest_research_updates_especially_for_new_joiners/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HerpesCureResearch/comments/kg66ds/...
- bawolff 5y ago
  Huh. They are crowdfunduing vaccine research? That seems a bit red flag. I would assume if it was actually promising, given the potential market, that funding would be easy to come by. Am i missing something here?
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    On the other hand, if they needed $500k, this is well within the budget of popular crowd funding projects, and it seemed like they have succeeded. As far as I know they raised the funds so I guess the strategy was sound. I don’t know the details but often crowd funding allows the creators to keep all IP rights, which would give them more freedom than going through institutional investors.
tluyben2 5y ago
You are downvoted I guess because of the not common sentence (not exactly sure as you even say some of them)? But I only heard of epstein barr from House (or ER, not entirely sure; some US show anyway) and started reading; seems herpes is connecting all these (at least here) puberty things like mono and different types of herpes and indeed ebv. They all apparently are herpes viruses and indeed, like you say can cause an array of cancers (dementia I could not find but the cancer link was made in a lot of scientific and gov papers). So herpes is rather important to destroy as it (and that included ebv) never goes away and 90%+ people have it. Which makes it easy to make the joke ‘these days everything causes cancer’ which is probably true because if you get old enough, you will develop cancer, but it does not mean we should not try to prevent some of the ways it works. So anyway, never thought ebv is common as I never heard of it in my country but that is because it is confused or piled on with mono (seems the symptoms are similar) and I know quite a lot more about herpes in general. So thanks and you are right; let’s do something about it, but also about the other diseases they mention as they are common in some country; all my Vietnam colleagues and their family had Dengue for instance and it is not good.

gwerbret 5y ago

While development of a new vaccine-delivery platform is exciting, I think it's important to take this announcement into perspective. The main problem with producing vaccines is not principally the delivery platform, but the difficulty in generating a sensitive, specific, and effective immune response to your target bug. This problem has plagued immunology for decades (and is a bit of a black art), and sadly may not be solved simply by using mRNA. Nevertheless, promising news. Presumably this is funded at least in part by the significant profits Modena has generated from the COVID vaccine.

needle0 5y ago

C'mon, you can't just throw out a number like that and not provide an exhaustive list of all 15 targeted diseases! The article (and its linked source) mentions Chikungunya, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Dengue, Ebola, Malaria, Marburg, Lassa fever, MERS, and COVID-19. Reading through the articles in depth also reveals mentions of Nipah, HIV, and Tuberculosis. That's 12. So what are the other 3?

mtoohig 5y ago
Dengue has 4 "variants". So that may be those are the other 3? The thing with dengue is the first time sucks but catching a second variant is often fatal.

RedShift1 5y ago

Original press release from Moderna: https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moderna-Announces-Its-Global-Public-Health-Strategy/default.aspx https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moder... The targeted diseases are: Chikungunya virus, COVID-19, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, Dengue, Ebola virus disease, HIV, Malaria, Marburg virus disease, Lassa fever, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), Nipah and henipaviral diseases, Rift Valley fever, Severe fever with Thrombocytopenia syndrome, Tuberculosis, Zika

esyir 5y ago
Dengue is a disease that vaccination actually makes worse, at least with the ones we have now. I'm wondering how they sidestep those issues.
- sjmm1989 5y ago
  > As Drew Weissman, one of the physician-scientists who helped develop mRNA vaccine technology put it, “mRNA vaccines are essentially plug and play. We believe you can change the part of the mRNA that encodes a protein, plugging in new code specific to the virus we hope to protect against, and cause one’s body to produce proteins that match that virus’ proteins. We do not have to develop and manufacture an entirely new formula.” I think this quote sufficiently answers your curiosity slightly. Not a lot, but slightly.
  - zpeti 5y ago
    I don’t think it does. With dengue fever the issue is once you develop antibodies the first time, the second time you get infected the antibodies actually increase the viruses chances of binding to whatever it binds to, so the effectiveness of the virus increases. I’m not sure how mRNA vaccines get around that, but I imagine they have a plan, it would be interesting to hear it.
  - esyir 5y ago
    Unfortunately not, I'm aware of how the mrna vaccines work. The issue with dengue in particular is a bit of a special case. Infection with a single serotype weakens the body against infection with other serotypes. Now. This poses a challenge to vaccination, as you need to find a way to get all four. Currently, we have dengvaxia, which does do that. However, an interesting effect is that the vaccination is only useful if you already have a history of dengue. If you're dengue naive, the vaxx increases the risk of severe disease instead.

cf141q5325 5y ago

Can anyone explain to me what exactly changed here? As far as i understand it there was nearly zero development effort necessary for COVID. The stuff was basically sitting on a shelf. Yet if i look at older news coverage, it was already clear that once it works, we will basically get a cancer vaccine soon. edit: The best i can tell its Bayers take on the topic, gene/cell therapy being bad PR. https://youtu.be/OJFKBritLlc?t=5850 https://youtu.be/OJFKBritLlc?t=5850

throwaway48375 5y ago
It would have taken many years to get the new technology approved, but we skipped a lot of that due to the pandemic. Now that we have lots of safety data it is easier for them to get new vaccines approved.
- kuhewa 5y ago
  Most of the years skipped though was red tape, bureaucratic slog, fundraising, clinical trial participant recruiting, and having a high enough absolute risk of infection in the population that it was not long at all to have a significant difference in effect between treatment arms. It probably helps that there's now a well develiped framework for mRNA and adenovirus vector vaccine approval, but ultimately any new antigen could certainly be unsafe and future candidates are going to require every bit as much testing and won't get most of the expeditiory benefits the first generation of COVID vaccines experienced.
adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
I think a lot of it is that clinical trials are expensive and drug manufacturers generally try to maximize odds of success. COVID was unique because they could get a ton of money to develop and test a vaccine that they knew there would be a ton of demand for if they were early to market with something that worked. now that they've seen how much easier and cheaper mRNA vaccines can be to develop, it's much easier to decide to start a trial.
jdavis703 5y ago
The research was easy, but the development required billions of dollars and literal war-time production efforts (in the US the Defense Production Act was invoked). Drug regulators are also very conservative. Why take risk on making a low-margin mRNA influenza vaccine when other platforms are good enough?

xdennis 5y ago

risyachka 5y ago
It is not banned in Europe
- argvargc 5y ago
  In several places it's been restricted from being used in certain age groups - due to safety - after being previously recommended for those age groups. I believe in at least one or two countries it's been withdrawn entirely. Certainly other vaccines released at the same time and presented as analogous to each other have been - all of which well justifies reluctance on trusting any of this new technology that was initially touted as completely safe, and in many cases still is, even after being withdrawn by government health agencies over safety. What? And for those harmed - there is an understandable addition of anger to the mix.

kylehotchkiss 5y ago

While solving these diseases is a long shot, this is a fantastic tech and financial reinvestment into improving quality of life for all people. I’m excited to see which discoveries they make, even if the MRNA path isn’t the right one for some of these diseases

Traubenfuchs 5y ago

I wonder if they carry the same serious side effect risk of the mRNA covid vaccines that are currently available: (permanent) heart damage, death and persistent long covid like side effects. Maybe a whole new set of them? I would love to get a safe and effective HIV vaccine, but I wouldn‘t take it if it could give me a heart attack!