4 ms·

I don't know anything about biology; how clickbaitey is the headline for this? It sounds awesome, but I always take "breakthrough" medical news with a huge grai

I don't know anything about biology; how clickbaitey is the headline for this? It sounds awesome, but I always take "breakthrough" medical news with a huge grain of salt.

searine 3y ago
The special sauce here is that they are using "RNAi", or RNA interference to reduce expression of viral proteins. This is a very well vetted technique in a research setting, but is not a clinical tool. There has been a tremendous hesitancy to using more advanced gene editing and expression modifying techniques in a clinical setting. People just don't like it. So, yes, this would likely work, but it would be very difficult to bring to market for human use.
- rob74 3y ago
  Yeah, the mRNA vaccines that appeared during the last years were also only made possible after some very significant issues were ironed out. To quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3: > Before 2005, a major problem with the proposed therapeutic use of mRNA was that in vivo use led to inflammatory reactions. A key insight came about when Karikó focused on why transfer RNA (tRNA), used as a control in an experiment, did not provoke the same immune reaction as mRNA. [...] Karikó and Weissman determined how specific nucleoside modifications in mRNA led to a reduced immune response: by replacing uridine with pseudouridine. > Another important achievement by the researchers was the development of a delivery technique to package the mRNA in lipid nanoparticles, a novel pharmaceutical drug delivery system for mRNA. The mRNA is injected into tiny fat droplets (lipid nanoparticles) which protect the fragile molecule until it can reach the desired area of the body.
- UberFly 3y ago
  Didn't Covid vaccines kinda kick down the door though? Might be less hesitancy because of that.
  - incrudible 3y ago
    To the contrary, people are more skeptical of vaccines than ever, leading to a drop even in proven childhood vaccinations.
    - hedora 3y ago
      There are more anti-vaxxers, but also more people that are strongly pro-vaccine. The latter group is more likely to be involved in vaccine approval processes.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - yonaguska 3y ago
        > The latter group is more likely to be involved in vaccine approval processes. I'd rather have skeptics involved in high risk approvals.
        SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
        "anti-vaxxers" are not rational sceptics of the kind needed in approval processes.
        yonaguska 3y ago
        My point is that someone that is strongly pro-vaccine is more harmful than not. I'd rather have someone that is just going to be unbiased and stick the scientific method. When you are doing something risky, the risk averse opinion, even if misguided, is far more safe than the the person who's vision is clouded by their preferences. of additional note, 2 FDA officials resigned during the votes on approving booster shots. They were simply replaced, and their concerns were moot. They were hardly anti-vaxxers.
        SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
- 14 3y ago
  I have met enough covid antivaxers to know it would be extremely difficult to convince a huge portion of the population to take this. It would take a massive deadly virus worse and more visible than covid ever was like bleeding eyeballs in the streets before people would take this vaccination en mass
  - mistermann 3y ago
    Speculative. A possible alternative approach is to not mock and antagonize them at massive scale but rather listen to their concerns, and address them non-rhetorically. "But they threw the first punch" is a rather reasonable response, but unfortunately we have to play the hand we've been dealt, not the one we'd like to have been dealt. Did you know, anti-vaxxers are not the only humans who are not perfectly rational? Try to imagine a scenario where it is you on the other side of the rationality table, but cannot realize it (as is the case with anti-vaxx/etc buffoons). Everyone is doing their best, but hardly anyone is trying their hardest.
    - 14 3y ago
      I will be the first to criticize the Canadian government and how they handled the COVID vaccine. They assured people would question it and doubt it. I won’t get into all the details as to why that is old news now but I truly think how they handled it was a failure on massive scale bordering incompetence and negligence. I did get vaccinated myself with the mandatory shots required for my job but have since not gotten any booster shots. I totally understand the side of the antivaxers but also think many of them are based on false information and propaganda some people are pushing and I have a hard time not judging those particular antivaxers.
      - mistermann 3y ago
        If you think they mishandled covid, you'll love how they're handling immigration and housing! > I totally understand the side of the antivaxers but also think many of them are based on false information and propaganda some people are pushing and I have a hard time not judging those particular antivaxers. This is largely a consequence of them being humans raised in Western culture in the year 2024 - everyone is this way, through the degree and ways in which vary, in ways that are mostly only believed to be known - as the saying goes: a fox cannot smell his own den.
NortySpock 3y ago
Well, the next step would be safety tests -- verifying that the shot doesn't give the recipient an auto-immune disease, where the body is taught to attack a part of itself.
- mistermann 3y ago
  [flagged]
jewayne 3y ago
The subheading is either deeply ignorant or actively misleading -- "End of the line for endless boosters?". No, it's not the end of the line for endless boosters. Humans do not retain lifetime immunity to many kinds of viruses -- the flu among them. Even if we do develop a universal flu vaccine, you will still need a periodic booster. The main difference will be that it could be the same exact vaccine, year after year. And yes, you might not need it every single year, either. But you almost certainly would still need boosters.
- DangitBobby 3y ago
  I'm guessing the headline came from this snippet: > When the researchers tested this strategy with a mouse virus called Nodamura, they did it with mutant mice lacking T and B cells. With one vaccine injection, they found the mice were protected from a lethal dose of the unmodified virus for at least 90 days. Note that some studies show nine mouse days are roughly equivalent to one human year. So assuming you can extrapolate to human timescales, it would be booster every 10 years. I also doubt it will be effective that long. Would have been nice for them to mention how long normal vaccines remain effective in mice.
  - thrtythreeforty 3y ago
    To me, the headline makes too strong of a claim to be backed up by such a weak statement - "some studies," "roughly equivalent," etc. Some studies show lots of things which you'd do well not to base any actions on.
hammock 3y ago
Well, it's in mice first of all. And it has nothing to do with the mRNA vaccines that are popular right now. Here's how it works in layman's terms: The "vaccine" is really a dose of a mutant virus that is the same as the virus you are supposedly infected with, with one key difference: this mutant virus is unable to fight off your body's immune system. But, like the original virus, it still triggers your immune system (to make RNAi). So, the vaccine (the mutant virus), replicates in your body and infects you, as the original virus is infecting you. Your immune system responds (the RNAi), doubly so, since it is seeing not only the original virus but also the mutant virus, and this double-size (not really double but the idea is..."more", "stronger") immune response is enough to knock out the original virus
- RetroTechie 3y ago
  > Well, it's in mice first of all. And it has nothing to do with the mRNA vaccines that are popular right now. So it's a novel strategy for vaccines. And it seems to be working. That combo should qualify as "breakthrough" I think? Sure, it may fail later on in clinical trials. But potentially a huge step forward.

I don't know anything about biology; how clickbaitey is the headline for this? It sounds awesome, but I always take "breakthrough" medical news with a huge grain of salt.

searine 3y ago

The special sauce here is that they are using "RNAi", or RNA interference to reduce expression of viral proteins. This is a very well vetted technique in a research setting, but is not a clinical tool. There has been a tremendous hesitancy to using more advanced gene editing and expression modifying techniques in a clinical setting. People just don't like it. So, yes, this would likely work, but it would be very difficult to bring to market for human use.

rob74 3y ago
Yeah, the mRNA vaccines that appeared during the last years were also only made possible after some very significant issues were ironed out. To quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3: > Before 2005, a major problem with the proposed therapeutic use of mRNA was that in vivo use led to inflammatory reactions. A key insight came about when Karikó focused on why transfer RNA (tRNA), used as a control in an experiment, did not provoke the same immune reaction as mRNA. [...] Karikó and Weissman determined how specific nucleoside modifications in mRNA led to a reduced immune response: by replacing uridine with pseudouridine. > Another important achievement by the researchers was the development of a delivery technique to package the mRNA in lipid nanoparticles, a novel pharmaceutical drug delivery system for mRNA. The mRNA is injected into tiny fat droplets (lipid nanoparticles) which protect the fragile molecule until it can reach the desired area of the body.
UberFly 3y ago
Didn't Covid vaccines kinda kick down the door though? Might be less hesitancy because of that.
- incrudible 3y ago
  To the contrary, people are more skeptical of vaccines than ever, leading to a drop even in proven childhood vaccinations.
  - hedora 3y ago
    There are more anti-vaxxers, but also more people that are strongly pro-vaccine. The latter group is more likely to be involved in vaccine approval processes.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - yonaguska 3y ago
      > The latter group is more likely to be involved in vaccine approval processes. I'd rather have skeptics involved in high risk approvals.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
        "anti-vaxxers" are not rational sceptics of the kind needed in approval processes.
        yonaguska 3y ago
        My point is that someone that is strongly pro-vaccine is more harmful than not. I'd rather have someone that is just going to be unbiased and stick the scientific method. When you are doing something risky, the risk averse opinion, even if misguided, is far more safe than the the person who's vision is clouded by their preferences. of additional note, 2 FDA officials resigned during the votes on approving booster shots. They were simply replaced, and their concerns were moot. They were hardly anti-vaxxers.
        SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
14 3y ago
I have met enough covid antivaxers to know it would be extremely difficult to convince a huge portion of the population to take this. It would take a massive deadly virus worse and more visible than covid ever was like bleeding eyeballs in the streets before people would take this vaccination en mass
- mistermann 3y ago
  Speculative. A possible alternative approach is to not mock and antagonize them at massive scale but rather listen to their concerns, and address them non-rhetorically. "But they threw the first punch" is a rather reasonable response, but unfortunately we have to play the hand we've been dealt, not the one we'd like to have been dealt. Did you know, anti-vaxxers are not the only humans who are not perfectly rational? Try to imagine a scenario where it is you on the other side of the rationality table, but cannot realize it (as is the case with anti-vaxx/etc buffoons). Everyone is doing their best, but hardly anyone is trying their hardest.
  - 14 3y ago
    I will be the first to criticize the Canadian government and how they handled the COVID vaccine. They assured people would question it and doubt it. I won’t get into all the details as to why that is old news now but I truly think how they handled it was a failure on massive scale bordering incompetence and negligence. I did get vaccinated myself with the mandatory shots required for my job but have since not gotten any booster shots. I totally understand the side of the antivaxers but also think many of them are based on false information and propaganda some people are pushing and I have a hard time not judging those particular antivaxers.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      If you think they mishandled covid, you'll love how they're handling immigration and housing! > I totally understand the side of the antivaxers but also think many of them are based on false information and propaganda some people are pushing and I have a hard time not judging those particular antivaxers. This is largely a consequence of them being humans raised in Western culture in the year 2024 - everyone is this way, through the degree and ways in which vary, in ways that are mostly only believed to be known - as the saying goes: a fox cannot smell his own den.

NortySpock 3y ago

Well, the next step would be safety tests -- verifying that the shot doesn't give the recipient an auto-immune disease, where the body is taught to attack a part of itself.

mistermann 3y ago
[flagged]

jewayne 3y ago

The subheading is either deeply ignorant or actively misleading -- "End of the line for endless boosters?". No, it's not the end of the line for endless boosters. Humans do not retain lifetime immunity to many kinds of viruses -- the flu among them. Even if we do develop a universal flu vaccine, you will still need a periodic booster. The main difference will be that it could be the same exact vaccine, year after year. And yes, you might not need it every single year, either. But you almost certainly would still need boosters.

DangitBobby 3y ago
I'm guessing the headline came from this snippet: > When the researchers tested this strategy with a mouse virus called Nodamura, they did it with mutant mice lacking T and B cells. With one vaccine injection, they found the mice were protected from a lethal dose of the unmodified virus for at least 90 days. Note that some studies show nine mouse days are roughly equivalent to one human year. So assuming you can extrapolate to human timescales, it would be booster every 10 years. I also doubt it will be effective that long. Would have been nice for them to mention how long normal vaccines remain effective in mice.
- thrtythreeforty 3y ago
  To me, the headline makes too strong of a claim to be backed up by such a weak statement - "some studies," "roughly equivalent," etc. Some studies show lots of things which you'd do well not to base any actions on.

hammock 3y ago

Well, it's in mice first of all. And it has nothing to do with the mRNA vaccines that are popular right now. Here's how it works in layman's terms: The "vaccine" is really a dose of a mutant virus that is the same as the virus you are supposedly infected with, with one key difference: this mutant virus is unable to fight off your body's immune system. But, like the original virus, it still triggers your immune system (to make RNAi). So, the vaccine (the mutant virus), replicates in your body and infects you, as the original virus is infecting you. Your immune system responds (the RNAi), doubly so, since it is seeing not only the original virus but also the mutant virus, and this double-size (not really double but the idea is..."more", "stronger") immune response is enough to knock out the original virus

RetroTechie 3y ago
> Well, it's in mice first of all. And it has nothing to do with the mRNA vaccines that are popular right now. So it's a novel strategy for vaccines. And it seems to be working. That combo should qualify as "breakthrough" I think? Sure, it may fail later on in clinical trials. But potentially a huge step forward.