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Possible Vaccination for COVID-19

2K views 16 replies 10 participants last post by  TRSOtto 
#1 ·
Thought I'd share some GOOD NEWS found in the Wall Street Journal.

IF, and please note that this is still being worked through the Regulatory Channels and needs to be properly vetted, but IF this works out, this could be a great development for fighting COVID-19.

From the WSJ:

Pittsburgh

Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine at a University of Pittsburgh lab. The deadly disease that crippled infants disappeared almost overnight, and Salk became a hero. He wasn’t Steel City’s only history-making physician. Thomas Starzl, who performed the first liver transplant in 1963, joined the Pitt faculty in 1981.

As the world faces another terrifying disease, Pitt medical scientists are again at work on a potentially revolutionary vaccine. Louis Falo and Andrea Gambotto, respectively a dermatologist and a surgeon, have developed a Covid-19 inoculation that rapidly produces large numbers of coronavirus antibodies when injected in mice.

A peer-reviewed paper describing their work appeared in the journal EBioMedicine, which is published by The Lancet.

They await approval from the Food and Drug Administration to conduct human trials on their vaccine candidate, which is delivered via a unique skin patch containing 400 tiny needles.

“This is a collision of two stories,” Dr. Falo says. “We’ve been developing the delivery technologies for this for the past several years and working with Dr. Gambotto in trying to use the skin as the ideal target for vaccine delivery. While we were doing that, Dr. Gambotto has been working on SARS and MERS.”

The two physicians’ labs are next door to each other.

Both SARS and MERS are caused by coronaviruses. “So we had experience in studying both SARS-CoV in 2003 and MERS-CoV in 2014. We knew how to fight this new virus,” said Dr. Gambotto. That work, he says, “made the development process for the current pandemic virus faster.”

Neither physician fits the stereotype of the dry, serious scientist. Both men are gregarious and reflect the personality of the city where they work.

Dr. Falo grew up in suburban Greensburg. He earned his bachelor’s in biochemistry and chemistry at Pitt before heading to Harvard Medical School.

“The plan was always to return to Pitt,” he says with his distinct Western Pennsylvania twang. “Most people probably don’t realize that Pitt is ranked among the top three or four medical centers in terms of funding from the NIH for research. But what really sets it apart is the collaborative environment. . . . It’s a big-time medical center with a small-town personality.”

A native of Bari, Italy, Dr. Gambotto fell in love with Pittsburgh during what was supposed to be a six-month research rotation. “They were a really long six months, because 25 years later I’m still here,” he says, his southern Italian accent thick and lyrical. He and his wife were married at La Prima Coffee shop in the city’s Strip District. “Thank God I didn’t become a gynecologist,” he says. “My father was a gynecologist, and everybody in my family was. I stopped the tradition, and now I deliver viruses instead of babies.”

Thanks to their previous collaborations on vaccine-platform development, the twin teams of Dr. Falo and Dr. Gambotto were able to generate their new potential vaccine, which they call PittCoVac, in a mere seven days. As they wait for the FDA’s green light, Dr. Falo says they’re tackling two issues. “One is the clinical testing and regulatory process. The other one is the scalability. So can you make a lot of these—millions, billions—to distribute across the world?”

It helps that the vaccine doesn’t require refrigeration. “That means that we can actually put these in boxes just like Band-Aids,” Dr. Falo says, “store them, ship them, distribute them globally, which is really important for underdeveloped countries who don’t have the means of keeping vaccines cold the entire time.”
The regulatory issue is out of their hands. Dr. Falo says the FDA is working as fast as it can while maintaining safety. “We’ve started that process. We’re exchanging data with them, describing what we have, how we make the vaccine, and their experts are evaluating that data to determine whether this vaccine is safe to put into patients.”

The University of Pittsburgh is still better known for its football team than for its scientists. But that could change if this vaccine candidate succeeds and beats back the coronavirus. If things go as planned, the names Falo and Gambotto could be as well-known as Jonas Salk.
 
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#4 ·
We should also remember that this is a vaccine, not a treatment for current cases. There should be some kind of a "speeded up" clinical trial tested on patients with the proper disclosures and permissions. I'm not in the medical field but, a year to a year and a half sounds like a time frame that could be accelerated with the right manpower and funding.
 
#5 ·
Well caution may still be in order here. It would be wise to be reasonable sure it will work and not kill people or make too many of them sick as well. I remember years ago when they had a experimental vaccine for anthrax. It was untested, and they even dared to fudge the data as well. They gave it to a large number of Army troops, some died, many got very sick, some did OK but still got sick, and some didn't have anything happen to them. Some troops refused the vaccine and wound up court martial-ed and some were thrown out of the military. They still don't know if that vaccine works or not. After the fact in hindsight, something like 48% of the people who got vaccinated got sick and 29% of those never really got over it either. But even those numbers may not be any good, too many people were trying to cover it all up. Worse is the vaccine won't work on the aerosol version of anthrax and the Russians said they found a strain of anthrax that the vaccine is worthless on too.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447151/
 
#6 ·
There's a reason that a new medication takes years and a billion or more dollars to go from concept to commonplace....
It sounds like we had a jump start on this one- they've been working with it for almost a decade already....
 
#7 ·
That's the nice thing, lots of previous work.
I agree it needs to be tested, that Anthrax thing was totally reckless.
18 months to sit and stare at a petri dish?? Im not a doctor, just a wise ass, but surely things can be expedited a little without worrying about it affecting the one eyed cave fish!!
 
#8 · (Edited)
The problem with these flu-type vaccines is that the flu strain will mutate quickly. By the time a vaccine is developed, it's for a flu strain that is ancient history. This happens every year; the pharmaceutical companies develop a vaccine for what they guess will be the next year's flu strain--and they are always wrong.

This will also be the case for the Wuhan virus. It's all a big song-and-dance, folks*. Bear in mind that there is a lot of money to be made here. You bet they will fudge numbers and gloss over unwanted side effects. The history of prescription medicine is replete with examples.

The other problem with flu vaccines is that they weaken your body's natural immunity. So not only do you get a useless vaccine, you are worse off for getting it!

The best thing to do is forget about vaccines and boost your own system's immune response. Boils down to the proper foods and supplements, nothing more, nothing less. Getting tired of constantly explaining this to people, esp. those who don't want to hear it, so you do the research yourself. Or just stay suckered into the pharmaceutical merry-go-round.


* Just like those stupid feel-good pink ribbon events to fight childhood cancer--which was unheard of a few decades ago. It's caused by over-vaccination of infants. Period. Plenty of whistleblowers have come out about this. The medical/Big Pharma combination is not your friend.
 
#9 ·
One problem is that this Covid19 virus causes the immune system to go overboard in the lungs, thus the people wind up drowning from their own fluids in the lungs due to the severe inflammation. So it sort of makes one wonder if having a strong immune response is a bad thing with this virus.
 
#16 ·
That is a good question.
I have noticed that whenever in the very few reports that go into any detail, the treating doctor used some sort of inmune suppression to reduce this cascade effect.
I gather but do not know the medical terms, disclosure I am an engineer not a medical trained person and with the shutdown have hot stayed in a Holiday Inn Express.
The immunity system as many different types of cells (if that is the correct classification( that attack disease. So by reducing the overload that is affecting one type of cell, this allows other portions of the patients immunity system to fight the infection.
If the patient can use steroids the some steroid such as Prednisone can be used.
The HCQ controversy shows that the immunity suppression is provided by the HCQ which is not a steroid.
Anti biotics are used to more or less fight
off bacteria that could cause pneumonia. Some of the antibiotics also have an anti-inflammatory property.

Take away by me is the immunity has more than one type of cell and the immunity suppression that is desired is more limited to one type that is causing the overload cascade. The other cells in the immunity system is still available and continue to fight the infection.
Also not necessarily direct fight of the virus but may also block target sights in other cells.
I doubt if any medical professional would explain this way, but looking at it from a systems approach and common features that is how I think about it.
 
#12 · (Edited)
#15 ·
Yes, they are.
Perhaps, if they were ever made to be responsible for a budget, it wouldn’t be so bad. CEO’s are making 40% more than they were in 2017. A friend of mine sells medical and lab equipment, there’s another racket for ya! Same concept as the $35 band aid.......insurance has to pay for all of it. Annnd who has to pay the premiums??? Totally out of control.
 
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