3 ms·

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

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.
atoav 5y ago
My (uneducated) guess: Some diseases might be "low hanging fruits" for mRNA vaccines (e.g. because they actually use RNA in their attack vector). Other diseases might not use RNA in their attack vector and might therefore not be suitable to be treated with mRNA vaccines.
- kuhewa 5y ago
  Some are low hanging fruit because training the immune system on a single specific protein antigen is sufficient to induce immunity. I don't think the RNA is too big of a deal because ultimately its role in the vaccine is to get cells to produce a protein for the immune system to attack, not induce immunity itself.
kuhewa 5y ago
Effort is going to go to diseases that they reckon have a high probability of success with just by presenting specific antigens. Herpes has had vaccine candidates in clinical trials that failed, chewing through hundreds of millions of dollars along the way. Difficult disease because of the way the virus goes dormant inside of nerve cells, and trials would be expensive and take a very long time because exposure is slow and generally takes years.

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.

atoav 5y ago

My (uneducated) guess: Some diseases might be "low hanging fruits" for mRNA vaccines (e.g. because they actually use RNA in their attack vector). Other diseases might not use RNA in their attack vector and might therefore not be suitable to be treated with mRNA vaccines.

kuhewa 5y ago
Some are low hanging fruit because training the immune system on a single specific protein antigen is sufficient to induce immunity. I don't think the RNA is too big of a deal because ultimately its role in the vaccine is to get cells to produce a protein for the immune system to attack, not induce immunity itself.

kuhewa 5y ago

Effort is going to go to diseases that they reckon have a high probability of success with just by presenting specific antigens. Herpes has had vaccine candidates in clinical trials that failed, chewing through hundreds of millions of dollars along the way. Difficult disease because of the way the virus goes dormant inside of nerve cells, and trials would be expensive and take a very long time because exposure is slow and generally takes years.