Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains

Wow!

The IbanezerScrooge said:

Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains

Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.

news.ucr.edu

Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised. ​

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Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains that are most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming flu season. And every year, people line up to get their updated vaccine, hoping the researchers formulated the shot correctly.​

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The same is true of COVID vaccines, which have been reformulated to target sub-variants of the most prevalent strains circulating in the U.S.​

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This new strategy would eliminate the need to create all these different shots, because it targets a part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus. The vaccine, how it works, and a demonstration of its efficacy in mice is described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ​

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This is good news. We will have to see what the next decade brings, and if this new vaccine technology comes to fruition at an affordable price.

Very interesting, but the quoted text seems overly optimistic. For example, the closing sentence of the abstract seems, to me, much more constrained in expectation. "Future studies are warranted to determine whether additional animal and human viruses attenuated by VSR inactivation induce similar protective immunity in healthy and adaptive immunity-compromised individuals."

Sounds good. After safety testing, I think this will be a money saver for healthcare hopefully.

"Ultimately, the researchers believe they can ‘cut and paste’ this strategy to make a one-and-done vaccine for any number of viruses."

interesting and promising technology but for working in research for so many years I can tell you this will be bought up by a big pharma, it might never be released.

Laodicean60 said:

Sounds good. After safety testing, I think this will be a money saver for healthcare hopefully.

"Ultimately, the researchers believe they can ‘cut and paste’ this strategy to make a one-and-done vaccine for any number of viruses."

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I question the credibility of "any number of viruses". As noted in my earlier post the researchers believe the approach will be limited to "viruses attenuated by VSR inactivation" on which the approach might work. How common are such viruses? I asked ChatGpt and this was the response:

Viral suppressor of RNA silencing (VSR) proteins are encoded by many plant and animal viruses as a means to counteract the host's RNA silencing defense mechanism. While VSRs have been extensively studied in plant viruses, they are also present in some animal viruses. However, it's important to note that not all viruses possess VSRs.

The proportion of human viruses attenuated by VSR inactivation specifically hasn't been extensively studied or quantified to my knowledge. Research in this area is ongoing, and scientists continue to investigate the role of VSRs in various viral infections. Additionally, the effectiveness of VSR inactivation as a therapeutic strategy may vary depending on the specific virus and the context of infection.

Like all ChatGpt outputs this one may contain errors, but does suggest my caution has some merit.

Ophiolite said:

Viral suppressor of RNA silencing (VSR) proteins are encoded by many plant and animal viruses as a means to counteract the host's RNA silencing defense mechanism.

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This might cause an overactive immune system and with that inflammation. I've heard the Covid vaccine is doing that to some people.

PreCOVID, I may get one cold....maaaybe two minor ones a year; easy enough to deal with.....maaaaaaaybe taking a day off if it was particularly bad.

But since 2022, I've been getting sick at LEAST twice a year....very COVID like but also just like a VERY bad cold. I'm needing to take almost a week to recouperate.

If they can create a vaccine that can help against ALL the different strains of influenza in a season, dang, that would be pretty awesome! And ditto for COVID.

rambot said:

But since 2022, I've been getting sick at LEAST twice a year....very COVID like but also just like a VERY bad cold. I'm needing to take almost a week to recouperate.

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I too notice feeling like crap longer than I used to. I haven't got the bad Covid you know the one that exhibits flu symptoms but a little worse.

Laodicean60 said:

I too notice feeling like crap longer than I used to. I haven't got the bad Covid you know the one that exhibits flu symptoms but a little worse.

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I had that in September. Did a number er on our whole family almost concurrently (which was convenient really. 2 teachers two students )

This makes Papa Nurgle sad, but I'm optimistic that the vaccine misinformation machine will either stop enough people from using this technology or to forbid it out of irrational political reasons.

Intriguing idea, but lots of questions remain. How many pathogenic viruses have this particular mechanism for suppressing the RNA-based antiviral defenses? How many have multiple such mechanisms, and will it be possible to disable them all? A key question is how long the protection lasts. Unless there's some mechanism for cells to continue to produce the small targeting RNAs after the virus is gone (which I haven't heard about), the RNAs will degrade in time and all protection will be lost. But on what timescale?