Category: Corona Virus Vaccine

Its been grim news all around for COVID-19. Italys skyrocketing death toll has now risen above Chinas. Countries are shutting borders. Massive cities in the US have ordered shelter-in-place to reduce viral transmission, severely disrupting livelihoods, businesses, and personal relationships for the greater good.

So. How about some good news?

According to STAT, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institute of Health (NIH) are betting on synthetic biology to outperform nature in engineering new vaccines against the COVID-19 virus.

Its a movement several years in the works. The idea is simple: we can already train the human immune system to recognize, hunt down, and attack invaders using variations of the viral enemy; chunks of virus, living viruses with kneecapped infection abilities. Scientists already largely understand how to trigger a safe immune response based on the makeup of a virus.

With synthetic biology, why cant we amp up those responses multi-fold?

Thanks to breakneck-speed advances in genome sequencing and synthesis, its now relatively simple to engineer components of a virus that are critical for triggering an immune response. To synthetic biologists, this represents a critical opportunity to revamp a sluggish vaccine-engineering industry based on decades-old technology. Why conform to nature when theres a chance to outwit its designs?

If COVID-19 ever comes back, or another coronavirus epidemic emergesa high chance, epidemiologists saysynthetic biology could offer us a plug-and-play universal vaccine. One thats produced at scale, doesnt need refrigeration, and can be easily tailored to a new outbreak and shipped to the entire world.

Vaccines are so critical to our everyday lives that its easy to overlook how theyre made. There are several ways, but the general concept is the same: identify the enemy, engineer one that causes less symptoms, and manufacture it at scale.

The enemy can be the entire virus, or protein components of the virus that stick out. For the whole virus, scientists can engineer one thats alive but less virulent, or use a dead one. More recently, theyve been focusing on figuring out the protein grabbers on the virus that interact with the immune systemtheyre basically how our bodies identify foes and rage into attack mode.

Picture a pincushion as a virus: the needles sticking out of it are the proteinscalled antigensthat interact with our immune system, rather than the cushion itself. Vaccines are generally similar in structure or functionality to these needle antigens. Think of them as beacons to attract our immune cells.

Regardless of the exact approach, the crux is training the immune system to recognize something nefarious that its never seen before, without subjecting it to the viruss full force. Knowing what the immune system grabs ontoidentifying the beaconson a virus gives us an incredibly potent target.

What if we stick these needle antigen targets interchangeably onto a synthetic pincushion?

Thats the general idea leading the development of synthetic biology vaccines. Forget nature; weve distilled critical parts of a virus, and can make Lego bits out of them in a plug-and-play manner. A specific definition of what constitutes a synthetic biology vaccine is still in flux, but one categorization is two-fold: vaccines using engineered genetic components, or man-made particles that mimic actual viruses.

The first option is already in clinical trials. Rather than making antigen protein components, scientists can instead synthesize mRNA, the messenger that delivers the genetic code to a cells protein factory. Thats what Moderna is trying with their COVID-19 vaccine. In theory, the mRNA will cause our own cells to follow its instructions and produce viral antigens. This alarms the immune system and triggers it to generate soldiersgenerally, proteins called antibodies that grab onto the beacons.

Unfortunately, early safety tests have found that mRNA vaccines can trigger detrimental reactions, and its not clear how effective theyll be. So far, these vaccines have yet to gain FDA approval. With Modernas COVID-19 vaccine in Phase I trials in humans, however, we may get safety (though not yet efficacy) results as early as the next few months.

The other idea is far more ambitious. The idea is to make a faux-virus that selectively amplifies the antigen component. Its a two-step job. First, scientists need to make a self-assembling core that mimics the body of the virusthe part that doesnt usually touch the immune system. Dr. Neil King, who has been working on coronavirus vaccines at the University of Washington, is using nanoparticles to build that core with the help of computational design.

Not every nanoparticle makes the cut. The key is to design one that works well with the antigen proteins, which need to be dotted on the cores surface. The more the antigens stick out, the easier it is for the immune system to recognize those invaders.

Heres where synthetic biology comes in. Using sophisticated computer algorithms, scientists can simulate how different sizes of nanoparticles interact with the antigen componentand in turn, how well they stimulate the immune system. We might try one million variants on the computer before finding a protein sequence that forms an optimal, self-assembling nanoparticle, said King.

Once the design is cleared, the protein sequence for the nanoparticle is encoded into synthetic DNA instructions. E. Coli bacteria, the workhorses of the lab, then adopt these instructions, process them inside their own cells, and pump out nanoparticle proteins at scale. When purifiedand if the computer simulations panned outthe proteins will then self-assemble into ideal nanoparticles in test tubes.

The second step is figuring out where to put the needles on the pincushion nanoparticle. Scientists have long known that certain factors can increase the chance that the immune system will recognize the viral antigenfor example, where the needles are placed pr how many there are and in what arrangement. The body has many biochemical responses that rip up synthetic antigens long before the immune system ever gets a looklike us washing our hands frequently or using hand sanitizers to neutralize a virus. For a vaccine, we need the antigens to stick around long enough to train the immune system.

King, for example, found that an ordered, repetitive array of the COVID-19 viral antigens produces a stronger immune response than a single needle protein antigen in the pincushion. In other words? Vaccines based on biosynthetic, virus-like nanoparticles could be more efficient than RNA or other vaccines in the pipeline for COVID-19. According to STAT News, several groups have begun testing these lab-made nanoparticles in mice to study how the animals react to COVID-19-like components.

Synthetic biology for viruses may seem far-fetched. It might not be a near-term solution for immediately squashing COVID-19. But its not a pipe dream. This month, King presented a model of designer vaccines to the US president while the latter toured facilities at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

If the solution works, well be looking at an entirely novel class of vaccines that breaks from natures reality. Nanoparticle-based vaccines, for example, dont need additional chemicalsdubbed adjuvantsto help stimulate the immune system. Because adjuvants are an additional component that in a minority of cases can lead to immune overreaction, not having them could make manufacturing processes easier and reduce adverse effects.

In addition, synthetic biology could also coronate a vaccine with a critical property: heat-resilience. A major problem with global production and shipping of vaccines is that they generally need to be refrigerated. However, synthetic nanoparticle protein scaffolds could make them far more stable than traditional vaccines. This means that for whoever needs help in a pandemic, at whatever altitude and climate, help could be more easily on the way.

Finally, theres hope for plug-and-play. If another novel virus comes along, scientists could potentially replace the COVID-19 viruss antigensthe needles that stick outwith ones from the new virus. The pincushion remains optimal and the same. In theory, it could dramatically arm us with a blueprint to better handle the next outbreak.

Designer vaccines are, without doubt, still very new and very ambitious. But perhaps the COVID-19 pandemic is giving them exactly the kick they need. Vaccine development has languished for nearly a century relying on traditional methods. Now that were facing our viral enemies far more viscerally and on a global scale, why not push for that next quantum leap in vaccine design?

Image Credit: MasterTux from Pixabay

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A Coronavirus Vaccine Could Be the First That Outwits Nature - Singularity Hub

While a vaccine against the novel coronavirus is expected to take upward of a year to develop and test, other treatments for the deadly threat could be just a few months away, health experts say.

More than 410,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and over 18,000 have died. Several countries have gone into lockdown as the number of those infected by the highly contagious disease continues to rapidly rise.

Scientists around the world are racing to develop treatments and vaccines, which will have to undergo several rounds of testing and clinical trials before moving on to mass production.

While a vaccine will likely take between 12 and 18 months to be proven safe and effective and be produced for mass use, other effective treatments could emerge much sooner.

Prof. Peter Jay Hotez, a prominent virologist and the dean of the Baylor College of Medicines National School of Tropical Medicine in Houston, Texas, told The Media Line that the earliest treatment that could work against COVID-19 would be a convalescent serum antibody therapy, in which the antibodies of a person who has recovered from the virus are injected into a sick patient.

In a study published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases in 2014, researchers demonstrated how convalescent blood plasma might be effective to significantly reduce mortality rates if administered to those who have contracted severe acute respiratory infections (SARIs) soon after their symptoms first appear.

According to Hotez, the next treatment to emerge after this will most likely be repurposed existing antiviral drugs in a few weeks or months, then new chemical drugs within a year, and a vaccine in one to three years.

Interestingly, Hotez and his team of scientists already developed a coronavirus vaccine years ago, following the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak, which spread out of China and ended up killing more than 770 people worldwide. However, when the vaccine reached the stage of human testing in 2016, he was unable to secure further funding and the trials were never concluded.

At the time we manufactured it, people had lost interest in coronavirus epidemics and pandemics, Hotez said, adding that researchers are now working to repurpose that vaccine for COVID-19.

Coronaviruses are a group of related viruses that cause diseases including some cases of the common cold, and not just SARS and COVID-19.

Dr. Rivka Abulafia-Lapid, a senior lecturer on virology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, agrees with Hotez that antiviral treatments will likely become available within six months and much sooner than a vaccine, barring any unforeseen developments.

Israel already has 11 different drugs for trial [on COVID-19 patients] so I would say that the first thing to come out will be a drug that will be commonly agreed upon by the worlds scientists and the FDA [the US Food and Drug Administration], followed by a vaccine, Abulafia-Lapid told The Media Line. In a couple of months, they will come out with a future treatment or maybe a cocktail of drugs.

Abulafia-Lapid, who for 25 years headed a research team in Israel dedicated to developing a viable vaccine against HIV and other autoimmune diseases, said that any vaccine would have to undergo a lengthy testing period involving several phases of clinical trials.

Among the current drugs being looked at as anti-coronavirus candidates in the meantime, she points to California-based biotech company Gilead Sciencess experimental antiviral drug remdesivir originally tested on humans with the Ebola virus as being a front-runner in terms of showing promise. Remdesivir is already being used in several coronavirus-linked clinical trials.

Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva, meanwhile, announced last week that it would donate more than 6 million doses of hydroxychloroquine sulfate pills to hospitals across the United States for further research. The medicine, which is typically used to treat malaria, is being investigated as a candidate to counter COVID-19.

Regarding the possibility of a convalescent antibody serum treatment, which Hotez says could already be administered to seriously ill patients, Abulafia-Lapid indicated that while such a treatment could save lives, significant challenges remained with scaling-up this method for thousands of people.

Ultimately, however, she is very optimistic that the world is six months away from an effective treatment.

In the future, we will have to come out every year with a new [COVID-19] vaccine because it mutates like influenza, Abulafia-Lapid said, adding that because the virus is so new, the human immune system is currently defenseless against it. You really need to teach the body [how to defend against it], she said.

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Coronavirus treatment other than vaccines may be available soon - The Jerusalem Post

During any big news event, Facebook becomes even more of a pit of toxic disinformation than it is on a relatively normal day. That said, there is one particular meme that I saw pop up a few times recently and I cant stop thinking about it.

(Some context about my feed: I am from rural West Tennessee, so I saw this posted by a couple of folks back home. Please do not come at meor anyone, reallywith talk of ignorant rednecks or country hicks, I will promptly tell you that is some reductive nonsense and its not the point Im making here.)

While both posters in my circles have since deleted the meme, which Facebook has now flagged as partly false information, its still really important to explain to our readers just why this specific post is completely bogus: For the eternal record contained within the limitless 1s and 0s of the Internet, there is no vaccine for humans who contract the novel coronavirus. This is the reality; it is not an elaborate ploy made up by the media for clicks.

The confusion here rests in the fact that there are several types of the virus. There is even a coronavirus that infects cows. And that is the one that is treated with a vaccine, ScourGard 4K, for healthy, pregnant cows and heifers as an aid in preventing diarrhea in their calves caused by bovine rotavirus, bovine coronavirus, and enterotoxigenic strains of Escherichia coil, according to manufacturer Zoetisus. Bovine coronavirus has been around for years. It is not the same as the novel coronavirus causing the current pandemic, it is merely in the same family. AsReuters reports:

According to the CDC, coronaviruses were first identified in the mid-1960s. Coronavirus is a term for a group of diseases. Seven different kinds of human coronaviruses exist, including 229E, NL63, OC43 and HKU1. Most human coronaviruses cause mild to moderate upper-respiratory tract illnesses, similar to the common cold. In different species, coronaviruses can produce a wide spectrum of disease syndromes. The CDC mentions that: Sometimes coronaviruses that infect animals can evolve and make people sick and become a new human coronavirus. Three recent examples of this are 2019-nCoV, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV.

It makes a lot of sense that in this moment, people are desperately seeking a solution to make them feel safer. But this vaccine aint it. And if weve learned anything so far this week, its that experimenting with medication without the oversight of a physician, even if youre following the word of our president, is downright dangerous.

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Another Day, Another Meme to Debunk: Vaccines for the Bovine Coronavirus Will Not Cure COVID-19 - Mother Jones

The race is on to develop a vaccine to protect against COVID-19. Germany, the United States, the European Union and others have collectively committed more than a billion dollars.

On March 11, Canada announced it would provide $275 million toward the research and development of some of the worlds most promising candidate vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics, among other public health and clinical research.

Public funds are the backbone of the underlying science thats needed to develop the medical tools that we need and use. But today there is little indication and no requirement that the billions of public dollars being spent will result in a vaccine or treatment for COVID-19 that is affordable.

Instead, governments appear poised to let the private market sort out the details of who gets access and at what price. Their logic is that public funding should be used to support early stage discovery, but that the research should ultimately transferred to private companies in order to be fully developed and priced based on what the market can bear. This logic, whether for COVID-19 or for any other disease, is flawed.

For its $275 million investment, Canada has yet to announce what safeguards it will enact to ensure that the vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics it develops are affordable and accessible to the people and health systems that need them. Given the massive public contributions being made, governments must ensure that the return on these investments comes in the form of lifesaving health services that are free for patients and affordable for health systems not in the form of high profits for private companies. This is not only the ethical thing to do, its also what makes sense as a matter of global public health policy.

Canada has recent experience in developing a vaccine that the world needed. The rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine for Ebola was developped by researchers working at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg in the early 2000s. Yet the vaccine was only approved for use by the European Medicines Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the fall of 2019, nearly 20 years after it was first developed and many years after the completion of the clinical trial showing it was effective.

Why the delay? For a long time, there was simply no financial interest from the private sector in moving it forward Ebola outbreaks occur in countries that cant afford the prices that make vaccine development lucrative for pharmaceutical companies.

As the Canadian government shopped around for a private sector partner to develop and commercialize the vaccine, there was little interest. One company with no previous experience bringing a vaccine to market acquired the rights in 2010 for $205,000 and has since sub-licensed the vaccine to Merck for US$50 million after having apparently done little to advance the development of the vaccine despite being contractually obligated to do so.

As a colleague put it recently in testimony to Parliaments Standing Committee on Health, there is no law of physics that says that the private pharmaceutical industry has to do research and development of lifesaving drugs and vaccines. In fact, the private sector has shown itself to be remarkably out-of-step with many global public health priorities, walking away from research and development of things we all need like new antibiotics. They have, however, become adept at demanding high prices under the threat of delaying the launch of new medicines if these pricing demands arent met.

It is essential that we learn the lessons from the Ebola vaccine and many other discoveries that have been supported by public funds and get it right, not only with COVID-19 but with our whole approach to publicly funded health innovation. Governments around the world play an integral role in supporting the science that leads to discovering lifesaving technologies.

In Canada alone, researchers in publicly funded labs have discovered an Ebola vaccine, insulin, the cardiac pacemaker, a vaccine for haemophilus influenzae and many others.

While Canada and other governments have supported this important work by directing funding towards universities and research institutes, these funding models generally fail to capture the process from discovery through to use, and instead rely on universities or the researchers themselves to figure out how to get their game-changing discoveries to patients.

Historically, theyve done this by commercializing their discoveries via the private sector, giving one company exclusive rights to do the subsequent development of the technologies and then to control the sale and price of them when they become a product with no safeguards or assurances to ensure that patients would have affordable access once the drug or vaccine hits the market.

This no-strings-attached approach to science is foolhardy in an era of patients dying because health systems cant afford drugs that now routinely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for some conditions, and where companies are already gearing up to massively profit off of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics.

As these new medical tools are developed, licensed and become commercially available, there is a real risk that, given the way the biomedical innovation system works today, they may be rendered inaccessible to those who need them. This should be unacceptable to Canadians, considering the significant public investment thats been made.

Canada can get this right. We have world-class scientists who by all accounts have promising candidate vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19 in the works. We should support their work with public funds through Canadas research granting councils and other mechanisms.

But we should not blindly accept that the only way these productive, world-class scientists can get their vaccines and therapeutics to patients is by selling them to pharmaceutical companies without negotiating access for patients and health systems upfront. We need safeguards that ensure that if the public paid for it, Canadians and everyone else around the world who needs it will be able to access it quickly and affordably, at a fair price. Public funds should deliver medicines and vaccines that are affordable for the public.

Read more: Coronavirus weekly: expert analysis from The Conversation global network

Canada may not even have to depend on commercial partners to bring medical innovation from the lab bench to the patients bedside. The experience of the Ebola vaccines development shows that public sector researchers did much of the heavy lifting in the development and even manufacturing of early batches of the vaccine. We have experts in clinical trials in our hospitals, universities and vaccine research groups who are more than capable of doing the necessary clinical trials to develop and deliver new health technologies quickly and affordably.

We can do health research and development differently, in a way that prioritizes access and affordability for patients and ends the profiteering off sick people in times of crisis. Lets get to work.

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Coronavirus vaccine must be affordable and accessible - The Conversation CA

Scientists around the world have started dozens of clinical trials, on more than 100 drugs, in the hunt to find a product that could attack the new coronavirus. More data will be coming soon.

The big picture: Expectations need to be tempered. A vaccine is likely a long way off, and failures are inevitable. But some experimental treatments, while they still require more research, are showing promise.

Where it stands: There are more than 100 coronavirus drugs and vaccines in development worldwide, according to Umer Raffat, an analyst at Evercore ISI who has been tracking progress.

A handful of potential treatments are worth paying particular attention to.

Read more from the original source:

Over 100 drugs are in testing in the race to treat coronavirus - Axios

For the United States, the question is no longer whether or not it will take months for city- and state-wide shutdowns to end and our lives to go back to normal, but rather how many months it will take. Until were able to flatten the curve and ensure that our hospitals wont be overwhelmed by an influx of sick patients who have been infected by the novel coronavirus, social distancing, shelter-in-place orders, and bans on large gatherings will be the norm. The only hope we have for expediting that process is the discovery of a drug that can treat COVID-19.

As it stands, there are no drugs or vaccines that have been approved to treat the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, no matter what the president claims. That said, treatments and medications are being tested and developed as I type this, and Matthew Harper of Stat News has offered up his forecast for when they might be ready.

Before we get to the forecasts, I should reiterate a few important points that Harper made in his piece. First, data from a comprehensive Biotechnology Innovation Organization paper puts the likelihood of approval for an infectious disease treatment starting clinical trials at just 19.1%. Furthermore, the timelines he mentions below could change and others could fail altogether. But at least its something concrete within this sea of uncertainty.

The first treatments that Harper discusses are existing antiviral medicines, which are available right now, but still need to be tested for efficacy before they can be more widely approved. Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine is one of the treatments that many have pinned their hopes on. Some doctors are also starting to combine hydroxychloroquine with an antibiotic called azithromycin. Unfortunately, evidence of efficacy for these treatments is still too limited, and larger clinical trials will take time to complete. Doctors will continue to use these existing medicines to treat sick patients, but it could be a month or more before we know if they really work.

Remdesivir is another existing drug that is being tested, as its maker Gilead is working with many researchers and governments on clinical trials. The first large study in China is scheduled to finish by April 3rd, at which point we will have some data to work with. Doctors are also experimenting with plasma transfers from those who have recovered to those who are still sick in order to boost their immune system with antibodies. Although this treatment is currently being used, a more refined product could take 9-18 months to produce.

As for new treatments, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals managed to develop artificial antibodies that proved effective against Ebola, and now wants to do the same for the novel coronavirus. Trials could start as soon as this summer, and the treatment could be available as early as this fall for extremely sick patients.

Finally, when it comes to a vaccine, the realistic best-case scenario is that something is ready before the end of next year. Several groups are working on vaccines, which increase the chances that a usable product is available by fall of 2021, but, as Rajeev Venkayya of Japanese pharmaceutical company Takeda said last week: Just because we start a vaccine program doesnt mean that we will definitely get a vaccine on the other end. The silver lining is that there might be a vaccine available for certain groups, such as healthcare workers, this fall.

I highly recommend reading Harpers entire piece on Stat News, as well as this thorough breakdown of all the drugs and vaccines currently in development to fight COVID-19 that the site published last week.

Image Source: FILIPPO VENEZIA/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Jacob started covering video games and technology in college as a hobby, but it quickly became clear to him that this was what he wanted to do for a living. He currently resides in New York writing for BGR. His previously published work can be found on TechHive, VentureBeat and Game Rant.

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This is when the first coronavirus drugs might actually be available - BGR

The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus may slow down in the United States in the not-so-distant future, but that doesn't mean life will go back to normal.

In an appearance on Face the Nation Sunday, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told host Margaret Brennan he expects a "slow transition" for society even if the epidemic peaks, as he expects, in late April and peters off in June. That's because it could come back in the fall, so until there's a vaccine, "life's never going to be perfectly normal."

In the meantime, he said some antiviral drugs currently in trial look like they could be effective in combating the virus, but he wasn't ready to say that there's any single development that's been overwhelmingly convincing.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), who has been at the forefront of the pandemic, shared Gottlieb's prediction that life won't revert back to the way it was anytime soon. He rattled off a wide range of time, suggesting things may be altered for anywhere between nine and 12 months.

More stories from theweek.comTrump suggests he might soon prioritize the economy over public healthThe death penalty has been abolished in ColoradoThe worst possible president for this crisis

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A coronavirus vaccine is the only thing that can make life 'perfectly normal' again, former FDA commissioner says - Yahoo News

Health workers are our most valuable resource for combating the coronavirus pandemic.They are also among the most vulnerable.During the SARS coronavirus epidemic in 2003, 20 percent of those infected globally (1,701) were health care workers. We tend to focus on age as a risk factor for COVID-19, but the biggest risk may be being a health worker, of any age.

The consequence extends well beyond the individuals infected. Every health worker who sickens or dies from COVID-19 reduces the capacity of the health system that cares for us all. Yet there are important steps that public health authorities could be taking right now to better protect health workers, and only a lack of imagination is stopping them being used.

As an intensive-care pediatrician and public health specialist, I have worked in many of the worlds worstoutbreaks, several of them in war zones. Aswithmany of my colleagues around the world, this is not my first pandemic.Yet, for the first time, I am filled with dread, even despair. Why?

Even in the best of circumstances, medical staff are at risk. In any emergency room, it is a given that we often have to get close to our patients to save themto do CPR,intubate, ventilate, and resuscitate. When time is of the essence, few of us will let our patient die for the want of an N95 mask. We risk it.

[Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak: Get daily updates on the pandemic and learn how its affecting countries around the world.]

These are not the best of circumstances.

Today,health workers are at great risk for several reasons. Medical personnel are exposed to more viral particles than the general public. That means theyre both more likely to get infected and likelier to have worse cases when they dowhich may be why so many younger Chinese doctors died. Protective equipment is in short supply as the tide of patients rises. And a combination of stress and long hours probably makes the immune systems of health workers more vulnerable than normal.This combination turns hospitals into hot spots of transmissioncoronavirus pumps.

Since the beginning of this pandemic, many front-line health workers have paid the ultimate price. The doctors in Wuhan who first raised the alarm not only were silenced by Chinese authorities, but several died of the virus. The pathogen does not discriminate among specialties. The first fatality among them was Li Wenliang, a young ophthalmologistnot a profession normally considered high-risk. His colleague Mei Zhongming, who died the following month, was also an ophthalmologist. A third was a thyroid and breast surgeon. A fourth, a neurosurgeon and hospital director. In Britain today, two ear, nose, and throat specialists are in critical condition.

We dont even have accurate numbers about the number of health workers infected or killed. China has never released accurate figuresjust as it has never released an accurate count of the total number of people who died from COVID-19. (If you died without being tested for COVID, Beijing says, you didnt die of COVID.)

A new podcast from Foreign Policy covering all aspects of the coronavirus pandemic

For six weeks, China insisted that only 13 doctors had been infected, lulling us into thinking that spread within hospitals was not a concern and could easily be prevented by standard masks and gloves. Suddenly, on Feb. 14, the announced number skyrocketed to 1,716, more than the medics infected throughout the entire SARS epidemic. By Feb. 20, the World Health Organization mission in China reported 2,055 lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases among health workers. By March 3, China estimated up to 3,200 had been infected.

By contrast, Italy consistently reported high rates of infected medicsabout 8.5 percent of total infections, or 20 percent of their health care workforce. In Spain, over 4,000 healthcare workers have been infected.

And these are well-prepared countries. In less-developed parts of the world such as much of sub-Saharan Africa, weak health care systems and inadequate infection control measuresa lack of running water, let alone disinfectant or isolation roomsmeans overburdened staff are at exceptionally high risk. The same is true in areas of conflict such as Yemen and Syria, as well as crowded refugee camps and sprawling urban slums. All of these areas are prime targets for the coronavirus.

When there are no doctors to intubate, no nurses to provide care, the death rate will skyrocket.And not just from COVID-19. None of the usual killerssuch as heart disease, cancer, and car accidentsare conveniently suspended during a pandemic.

We all know that using personal protective equipment and related protocols are essential. Yet, evenwhen health workers are in a full moon suit, virus particles can often find a way to infect them. Institutions can equally fail in their duty to protect health care workers. When two nurses in Dallas were infected with Ebola in 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contended that it was due to a breach in protocolbut the nurses said no protocols had been established in the first place. When a Californian nurse caring for a COVID-19 patient developed symptoms and requested a test, the CDC refused, saying if she had followed protocol, she wouldnt have been infected. (The CDC subsequently changed its protocols for both cases but has never apologized to the nurses.)

In any event, today there are not enough N95 masks, gowns, suits, and goggles to go around. Given the uncertainty, risk, and fear surrounding this disease, it is hard to have the confidence needed to care for patients well. For those with families and children they spend time with after their shifts, it is even harder.

For both pragmatic and humanitarian reasons, protecting health care workers should be our highest priority in fighting the coronavirus. More beds, more hospitals, and perfect supply chains will all be redundant if there are no health care workers left or willing to take the considerable risks to fight the disease.

Yet there are things that could be done to better protect health workers. A vaccine for COVID-19 is a long way off, but certain other drugs may offer some protection.That does not mean adopting the various forms of quackery, snake oil, and supposed miracle cures that the panic of a pandemic tends to promote. Research protocols are not the same as rumors, anecdotes, and presidential tweets.

Yet one area worth exploring is the use of live vaccines to increase the recipients immune response.One such inoculation is called the Bacillus Calmette-Gurin vaccine, or BCG, which has long been used against tuberculosis.

Several studies in other contexts show that BCG primes the immune system to respond better to infections of various sorts, not just TB.Two studies in adults (one in patients aged 60 to 75) showed that BCG reduces respiratory infections by 70 to 80 percent.Two more reported a 15 to 40 percent lower risk of respiratory infections in vaccinated children. Another showed that, when given to infants in countries with severe health challenges and combined with a revived immunization scheme, BCG cut deaths from all causes by just under a third. However, some studies suggest that this protective effect lasts only until an inactivated vaccine (such as an influenza vaccine) is later given.

Given this promising research, a systematic review commissioned by the WHO and published in 2016 concluded that the BCG vaccine had beneficial off-target effects and recommended further research.Onesuch trial has just begun in the Netherlands. A larger trial of 4,000 health workers is due to start next week in Australia. Others are being considered in Greece, Britain, Germany, Denmark, and the United States.

That protection would not be perfecta BCG vaccination is not the same as a targeted vaccination for COVID-19but it is likely to significantly reduce illness and death among those who receive it. Even if BCG vaccines were given only to health workers, we might substantially reduce the risks they face and lessen the risk of our hospitals and health systems collapsing. If effective, it could also be rapidly given to other particularly vulnerable people such as the elderly. It could be especially useful in countries that have weak health care systems and would quickly be overwhelmed by a large outbreak. And the vaccine is cheap, safe, and, most important, immediately available for testing. Health care workers must be the priority, but once manufacture of the vaccine is ramped up, it could be much more widely available.

Yet the big global institutions are dawdling. Despite the WHOs recommendation, big public health institutions are not actively investigating BCG. Nor are global health foundations such as Gates funding this crucial research. While research and development into new drugs may be sexier, it is hard to understand the reluctance to explore nontraditional uses of existing drugs. The big pharmaceutical companies are also sitting on their hands, apparently because there is little profit in an established vaccine such as BCG.

Our global defenses are only as good as our front-line health workers. With so much evidence pointing to the potential for BCG to provide at least partial protection, it is indefensible, even unethical, to overlook it simply because this strategy is unorthodox and unprofitable. Trials to test its beneficial effects for COVID-19 are urgently needed.

Originally posted here:

This Vaccine Could Save Health Care Workers From the Coronavirus - Foreign Policy

In an exclusive interview on Sunday Morning Futures, Alex Gorsky, the CEO of Johnson & Johnson,discussed his companys efforts to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, saying, I think well have important data by the end of the year.

Gorsky discussed the goals as many hospitals have beenoverwhelmed amid the coronavirus pandemic, with officials saying they wererunning out of protective gear and ventilators to keep up with the influx of patients infected with the novel coronavirus.

Last month, Johnson & Johnson announced that its Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies would further expedite its investigational coronavirus vaccine program through an expanded collaboration with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, part of the Department of Health & Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.

Company executives also said last month that in addition to Janssens efforts to develop a vaccine, it was working closely with global partners to screen its library of antiviral molecules to accelerate the discovery of potential COVID-19 treatments in an effort to provide relief for patients around the world.

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Host Maria Bartiromo noted on Sunday that Johnson &Johnson will be conducting human clinical trials for the COVID-19 vaccine thisNovember.

The most important thingthat we can do is stop the virusfrom occurring in the firstplace, Gorsky told Bartiromo. I want to highlight the effortsof our science system around theworld who really, back in lateDecember and early January... quickly ramped up in aprocess that can typically take anywherebetween five to seven years, and theywere able to do it in a matterof weeks and months.

He went on to say that Johnson & Johnson was working hard with partners around the world including the Food and Drug Administration [FDA], academic institutions and theorganizations responsible forvaccines in the United States and in Europe, to do everythingwe can to accelerate thedevelopment.

We continue to runour different clinical trials, he continued. We expect to be starting upvery soon, likely within the nextmonth, and I think well haveimportant data by the end ofthe year.

He added that in addition to finding a working vaccine, the other really important component would be to have an adequate supply.

Right now, we are makingvery significant investment,somewhat at risk, knowing that weneed to have adequate supply inparallel with knowing that thevaccine actually works, he said.

When Bartiromo asked Gorsky if he was willing to takehis supply chain entirely backto America instead of relying on China foractive ingredients inprescription drugs, he responded, I think the facts are that most of the large companies now havelarge global integrative supplychains.

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I think we also recognize thatthis crisis provides us with anopportunity to make sure that wehave always got supplies, notonly on the global basis, but also ona national basis, he continued.I think what we want to bethoughtful of, as we go throughthis in [the] short-term, that weprioritize making sure that were getting the supplies thatwe need, and then, longer-term... the important changes andtransitions that we need to make in ourcurrent system to make sure itis protected.

Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo contributed to this report.

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Johnson & Johnson CEO on potential coronavirus vaccine: 'I think we'll have important data by the end of the year' - Fox News

Last week, the first volunteers in a study of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine received their first doses, and the vaccines developer, Moderna Therapeutics, is already thinking ahead. Although testing on the vaccine will take at least a year to complete, the work could provide valuable information about how the immune system can fight coronaviruses and could give scientists a head start if any new outbreaks of the virus were to occur.

Non-essential staff at Moderna Therapeutics manufacturing facility, in Norwood, Mass., including president Dr. Stephen Hoge, are working from home as recommended by public health officials, but those involved in manufacturing what may be the first vaccine against the novel coronavirus are ready to scale up production if the first phase of testing on the vaccine shows that its safe.

The vaccine will be studied first in a group of 45 healthy volunteers, who have not been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. In this group, scientists are looking to see if the shots are safe, and to test three different dosages to see which seems to activate the strongest immune response. If these initial subjects dont develop any severe side effects or reactions, then researchers will recruit hundreds more healthy volunteers to confirm those results,

For the first phase, Moderna shipped hundreds of vials of the test vaccine to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is overseeing the study in multiple centers in the US. For the next, says Hoge, it will be several fold, maybe five-fold larger than the first phase. We are talking thousands of vials.

And if the vaccine proves not just safe, but also successful, the company is preparing for an anticipated incredible demand to scale up the vaccine very, very quickly, Hoge says, we have already started to do work to scale up to producing millions of doses.

Thats made possible, in part, by the non-traditional technology used to make this particular vaccine. Moderna uses mRNA, a genetic form of the virus genome, in its vaccine. When its injected into people, cells then process it so immune cells can recognize it and target it for destruction. Unlike the processes used to make most traditional vaccines, this method does not require growing huge amounts of the virus, which is time-consuming.

Its also why the vaccine was developed in record time. Chinese researchers first posted the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 in mid-January, and by Feb. 7, Moderna had vials of the vaccine ready for the standards-testing needed before the treatment could be cleared for human trials. By the last week of February, that was completed and the company sent vials to NIH for further review by its scientists. Then both Moderna and NIH filed for a request to the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates trials of experimental therapies, to start injecting the vaccine in people for human testing.

Hogue is hopeful that his team can continue to shave valuable time off the process while producing a safe and effective vaccine. The original goal when Dr. Anthony Fauci [director of the NIHs National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] first announced the vaccine, was to get it into humans in roughly three months. We managed to do that in 63 days, so we already demonstrated the ability to move a little faster than expectations, he says. We have an ethical responsibility to build the data and show the vaccine is safe and effective, and to do that in a sequential way. Still, every chance we have to continue to demonstrate that we can pull the timeline in, we will take.

Testing on patients who have contracted the virus may still be months away, and Fauci predicts that the trials may not conclude for another 12-18 months. But in the meanwhile, every week, day and minute count. From the very beginning, this was a race, a race against the virus, says Hoge. If there is anything we learned in the past month, its that we need to keep pressing every time advantage that we can.

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As the First Coronavirus Vaccine Human Trials Begin, Manufacturer Is Already Preparing to Scale Production to Millions - TIME