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Single vaccine could protect against all coughs, colds and flus
- botusaurus 8mo agowhy do they call it a vaccine, its nothing like that... there's probably a reason evolution didnt put the immune system on permanent "amber alert" as they call it in the article
- Angostura 8mo ago> The research team in the US does not think the immune system should be permanently dialled up and think such a vaccine should be used to compliment rather than replace current vaccines
- kojacklives 8mo agoTrue though there is the theory that it was unnecessary for the immune system to regulate itself in some ways because we were full of parasites.
- Larrikin 8mo agoAre you wildly speculating or do you have a source with research backing up your claim evolution got it perfectly right? I personally look forward to every innovation that potentially improves our baseline.
- rozal 8mo ago[dead]
- aaa_aaa 8mo agoI bet my money on the immune system any day.
- thomquaid 8mo agoHard to beat a half million years of evolution with a nasal spray from last year.
- javascriptfan69 8mo agoYou don't have to bet money on it. You can just stop taking antibiotics and vaccines. Those are way more interesting odds.
- wizzwizz4 8mo ago(Most) vaccines work by letting your immune system know to watch out for particular things. That's an information advantage. Likewise, antibiotics are chemical agents that the body lacks the genes to synthesise. Betting that the immune system's parameters are generally well-calibrated is entirely compatible with taking antibiotics and vaccines, where indicated. You wouldn't want to get vaccinated for smallpox in the middle of a plague epidemic, because that would waste your immune system's resources on an extinct-in-the-wild disease, when it really needs to be gearing up to stop the plague killing you.
- XorNot 8mo agoThe immune system does not expend resources on vaccines. You do not somehow go into deficit by getting a vaccine.
- wizzwizz4 8mo agoThe immune system does expend resources on vaccines: it makes antibodies, usually has some kind of inflammatory response…. But if a vaccine causes a nutritional deficiency, there's something seriously wrong with your diet.
- XorNot 8mo agoThis is like saying that balancing while walking expends resources. Yes it's technically true, but it is also how walking functions regardless of circumstance.
- dekhn 8mo agoThey didn't claim evolution got it perfectly right. They speculated that immune systems evolved to avoid being continuously on alert. And that's exactly right- our immune systems have an extremely complicated system for detecting foreign invaders that is tightly regulated. And a failure to regulate that is often associated with autoimmune disorders, which remain very poorly understood. I've studied biology from the perspective of engineering better drugs for decades now and I can say with confidence that I simply don't understand how the immune system works, and I don't think anybody else really does either (compared to, say, the heart, or many biological systems like protein production). We have identified many players, and observed a great deal of actions, and have speculative models for many of the underlying processes, but we don't really have an "understanding" of the immune system. I skimmed this paper and frankly, it has a very long way to go before people are convinced to try this in human clinical trials. I look forward to innovations, but to a first order approximation: evolution found model parameters that exceed the best human science and engineering.
- amelius 8mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_alert Amber alert means something different than the author thinks ...
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- RupertSalt 8mo agoPerhaps "Defcon 02" would be better understood?
- kazinator 8mo agoThey wanted "red alert". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Alert This is just an idiom for denoting a high alert state.
- RupertSalt 8mo agoNo, "Red Alert" is called when there is an attack imminent, incoming weapons detected, enemies sighted. So a macrophage on "red alert" would be reacting to an active infection or disease.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- kazinator 8mo agoSure, and this vaccine goads the macrophage into that state, putting it on "red alert", without there actually being an infection.
- RupertSalt 8mo agoI suppose it is not worth debating a metaphor written by BBC reporters for the general public, without even reading the research. But I was edified to learn that Dr Edward Jenner was a vaccine pioneer even without the honors of knighthood.
- renewiltord 8mo agoOne of the things I do worry about is glasses. Is there a reason why we correct vision? There's probably a reason evolution made some of us see the world in a blur. Likewise with therapy - maybe killing yourself is like cell apoptosis. Many body cells are supposed to choose to die when they no longer function well. It's a good thing. That's often the problem with scientists: "They were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should". Until we find out why nature made it so some of us kill ourselves maybe we shouldn't fuck with it? Remember Chesterton's Fence.
- thomquaid 8mo agoThis isnt a vaccine against suicide.
- lanyard-textile 8mo agoReally...?? :) "Sorry son, you can't get these glasses. It's for the betterment of humanity."
- mikestorrent 8mo agoI think you missed their sarcasm
- lanyard-textile 8mo ago... Yeah probably huh :) You just don't know sometimes.
- krapp 8mo agoYou're making the mistake of thinking of "nature" and "evolution" as intelligent, reasoning systems, and that every evolutionary adaptation exists for a purpose. Evolution doesn't do things for "reasons," things just happen. Remember that cephalopod brains are donut shaped and their digestive tracts go right through the middle and if they eat something too big they'll have an anyeurism. Pandas and koalas evolved special diets that serve no evolutionary purpose and both would be extinct if humans didn't find them cute. Sloths have to climb down from trees to take a shit. Female hyenas give birth through a pseudopenis that often ruptures and kils them. Horses can't vomit and if they swallow something toxic, their stomach ruptures. Also their hooves and ankles are extremely weak and not well designed to support their weight. Numerous species like the fiddler crab and peacock have evolved sexual displays that are actively harmful to their survival. And as for humans, our spines are not well adapted for walking upright, our retinas are wired backwards, and we still have a useless appendix and wisdom teeth. The recurrent laryngeal nerve has an unnecessarily long and complex route branching off the vagus and travelling around the aorta before running back up to the larynx. Evolution is not smart. Evolution isn't even stupid. It isn't trying to keep you alive and it isn't even capable of caring if you die. Yes we should absolutely fuck with it, because we don't want to live in a world where we still die of sepsis and parasites and plagues because "we don't want to mess with evolution."
- giarc 8mo ago>The effect lasted for around three months in animal experiments. It would just be temporary, but there is likely trade offs.
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- mattmaroon 8mo agoIsn’t Amber alert a missing child? Wouldn’t you say like DEFCON three or something?
- RupertSalt 8mo agoThis article is from the UK, so it's more like: evacuate the children, Keep Calm and Carry On, but fight them on the beaches.
- hkt 8mo agoI'll be fascinated to see how this plays out for people with autoimmune conditions - generalised heightening of the immune system feels like it would be dangerous for those people. Are any immunologists lurking who might be able to speculate?
- senkora 8mo agoIt seems like it could also be quite dangerous for those with food allergies.
- kazinator 8mo agoBut then it is mentioned that the treatment "also seemed to reduce the response to house dust mite allergens". The treatment also supposedly activates macrophages in the lungs (and thus not elsewhere). Only some small particles and vapor droplets from foods go into the lungs.
- PaulKeeble 8mo agoIts often completely normal to use healthy controls in a trial like this, healthy people not getting ill is your target audience and the long term stage 3 will be against healthy people. So many drugs are not tested against obvious groups that might produce a poor result to make the findings as strong as possible but it means in a lot of cases chronically ill people are making judgements on no data at all.
- reliablereason 8mo ago> It is given as a nasal spray and leaves white blood cells in our lungs – called macrophages – on "amber alert" and ready to jump into action no matter what infection tries to get in. Right and if that is such a good thing why are those macrophages not always on alert. I smell longterm cancer or similar.
- amelius 8mo agoOr antimicrobial resistance.
- LeoPanthera 8mo agoIf only Stanford University had asked you first!
- bob001 8mo agoIf only you had read the article. >There may also be consequences to dialling up the immune system beyond its normal state – raising questions of immune disorders. > Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said the work was undeniably "exciting" but cautioned "we have to ensure that keeping the body on 'high alert' doesn't lead to friendly fire, where a hyper-ready immune system accidentally triggers unwelcome side effects". > The research team in the US does not think the immune system should be permanently dialled up and think such a vaccine should be used to compliment rather than replace current vaccines.
- mattmaroon 8mo agoThey are behind a paywall for Americans now.
- bob001 8mo ago> I smell longterm cancer or similar. Or simply autoimmune reactions which can be devastating.
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- nkmnz 8mo agoWe shouldn't call it a vaccine when, in fact, it's just a line of cocaine for macrophages.
- arghwhat 8mo agoWe also shouldn't call it "vegan leather" when it is in fact just plastic. Naming departs from technical accuracy when adopted by the masses, as they retrofit their common understanding. Wouldn't be too surprised if "vaccine" ends up covering other strong defense-boosters.
- poszlem 8mo agoYes, but in this case the name is likely to actually reduce the adoption not increase it.
- wvbdmp 8mo agoI mean the word “vaccine” literally specifically references cow pox, so it’s already broadened. No reason not to go up another level.
- jjtheblunt 8mo ago> "vegan leather" when it is in fact just plastic. https://knowingfabric.com/mushroom-leather-mycelium-sustainable-vegan-materials/ https://knowingfabric.com/mushroom-leather-mycelium-sustaina... is pretty neat
- speedbird 8mo agoInteresting topic, offensive website. Back to the story …
- arghwhat 8mo agoMycelium is neat, but last time I heard of it the problem was far, far too low manufacturing throughput. I don't think anyone would even consider marketing that as "vegan leather", as doing so would mean putting you in the same bucket as cheap-as-dirt polyurethane (which is what regular "vegan leather" is), at an astronomically higher price. You'd pick a new term to differentiate. I vote for "shroomskin".
- bobomonkey 8mo agoEven if it worked perfectly, I would be worried that an unexercised immune system would turn on me.
- scotty79 8mo agoMacrophages are trash eaters. Keeping them active might even be beneficial for other reasons.
- rolph 8mo agothis isnt exactly a vaccine its more like prophylactic immunoinduction. "toll like receptors" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7173040/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7173040/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359644625002089 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135964462... https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40364-022-00436-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40364-022-00436-7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll-like_receptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll-like_receptor
- midnightdiesel 8mo agoI wonder how long before this gets defunded too?
- King-Aaron 8mo ago[flagged]
- jdauriemma 8mo agoThis team is at Stanford, unless I’m reading the article incorrectly. Still awful that the US pulled out of WHO.
- King-Aaron 8mo agoAh yep, I read the story elsewhere earlier that insinuated it was a team outside of the US
- ottah 8mo agoThis sounds like a great way to create an autoimmune disease.
- Spivak 8mo agoThat's a good chunk of immunotherapy, still super useful.
- CyanLite2 8mo agoIsn't this how "I Am Legend" started?
- adam_gyroscope 8mo agoMy favorite twitter account was “in mice” which just posted stories like this and added “in mice”. Which applies here.
- alephnerd 8mo agoIt may come as a shock, but mice are some of the closest species to Humans genetically speaking [0] with 95-99% similarity depending on the gene in question, and a large portion of diseases are shared by both mice and humans [1]. One of the geneticists who worked on identifying this is also on HN and tried to explain this [2] but HNers think they are smarter than actual leaders in the fields of genomics. [0] - https://www.mpg.de/10973923/why-do-scientists-investigate-mice https://www.mpg.de/10973923/why-do-scientists-investigate-mi... [1] - https://www.mpg.de/8949327/structural-variants-crispr-cas https://www.mpg.de/8949327/structural-variants-crispr-cas [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41260651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41260651
- bradleyjg 8mo agoAll that may well be true. But one doesn’t have to be a leader in the field of genomics to have read decades of articles breathlessly proclaiming medical breakthroughs (in mice) and then not ever seeing them hit the market (in humans.) Or in other words the meat of the critique is not aimed at genomics, but rather in science marketing.
- alephnerd 8mo agoYou can say the same thing about Phase 1 to 3 as well. The reality is every theraputic has some kind of negative side effect, which may reduce the incentive for it to be productionized becuase the whole point about medicine is harm reduction. Passing the hurdle of being viable in mice is a major hurdle because in most cases, experiments fail. And if it's efficacy is proven in mice, it shows viability in a specific approach and justifies investing the hundreds of millions of dollars in trying to bring something to Phase 3.
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- tonetheman 8mo ago[dead]
- cdcluv 8mo agoDespite a lot of education, I don’t know the immune system well, because it’s complex. However, it’s my understanding that when the body is in a state of readiness due to its infection (from a cold, flu, etc.) the effects of this (such as fever, inflammation, and general immune response) could potentially could guard the body against other types of infections that the body perhaps doesn’t have resistance to. So while I think a universal vaccine sounds great, I’d try it, and I’d want others I know that have dust allergies, etc. to try it, and because we’ve had friends and family die from the flu, I’m still a little suspicious that this could open the door for other types of disease we’ve not been having to deal with.
- linhns 8mo agoNice to hear but I'm afraid this will end up like generic solutions, good but not fully effective for single diseases.
- grigio 8mo agois this a new series?