Category: Covid-19 Vaccine

Actors Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson have bothbeen approved to donate blood as part of an effort to find a vaccine for coronavirus aka COVID-19. The couplehad beenamong some of the earliest high-profilecelebritiesto test positive for the virus back in early March during the filming ofan as-yet-untitled Elvis Presley biopic in Australia. Both had immediately gone into isolation while recovering, keeping their fans updated regularly via social media of their progress and experience.After several weeks of quarantine, they were cleared toreturn home to Los Angeles to continue their recovery.

With the coronavirus continuing to spread and countries practicing social distancing and lockdowns, researchers around the worldare continuing to race to find a vaccine. Oneof the pre-requisites continues to be improving the antibody detection tests and thenidentifying individuals who have recovered from the virus and have an antibody count high enough to be useful for study and testing.After Hanks and Wilson'sreturn, they submitted to be tested for the antibodies to see if they could help contribute.

Related:How Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson Caught Coronavirus

During an interview with NPR,Hanks revealedtheir samples had been found to have the antibodies and were approvedto donate blood to organizations that are currently working on finding a vaccine. They're not just waiting for the scientists to come to them, they're also reaching out proactively as well, saying, "We have not only been approached, we have said, Do you want our blood? Can we give plasma?" Should the scientists develop a cure from their blood, the ever-helpful Hanks added that he already has a name to suggest for the would-be cure, "Hank-ccine."

The couple, both aged 63,are just shy of the highest age-risk group, which is currently set at age 65. They were also fortunate not to have suffered the worst of the complications, but it still was serious, especially for Wilson. Hanks noted, "Rita went through a tougher time than I did. She had a much higher fever. She had lost her sense of taste and sense of smell." Now that they have also recovered, Hanks has found himself busy once again, recently hosting the return of Saturday Night Live withan "At Home Edition."

Both Hanks and Wilson have films ready for release that have been sidelined by the ongoing pandemic. Wilson's drama Love Is Love Is Love had been slated to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, but that's no longer in the cards. Meanwhile, Hanks' WWII film, Greyhound, had been ready for release in March but was first pushed to June before being taken off of the release slate entirelyuntil studios work out a new theatrical release model. Or until audiences are safe to venture out to the box office once again, perhaps thanks to aHankccine.

More: That Tom Hanks & Castaway Volleyball In Coronavirus Quarantine Photo Is FAKE

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Tom Hanks' Blood Being Used to Develop COVID-19 Vaccine - Screen Rant

In the quiet of the University of Saskatchewan's shuttered campus, there is one constant beacon of light and hope. Dr. Volker Gerdts and his team of researchers are working in shifts around the clock to find a vaccine for the novel coronavirus and feeling the pressure to move even faster.

"There is a real sense of urgency," Dr. Gerdts says.

"We have a highly motivated team, and everybody is willing to step up and do as much as they can. And so this is really, you know, a race against the disease."

Gerdts is the director and chief executive officer of the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization - International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac). The lab in Saskatoon is one of the most advanced infectious disease research facilities in the world and has been evaluating COVID-19 vaccine models for several weeks.

A recent $28-million funding boost from the federal and provincial government to enhance its COVID-19 research capacity to testantivirals, drugs, and therapeutics has been helping fast-track that research even more.

And on April 23,Prime Minister Justin Trudeauannounced a $1.1 billion national strategy for medical research to fight COVID-19, including:

VIDO-InterVac is already at the forefront of an extraordinary global effort to halt the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus. It's one of a handful of labs in the world with a potential vaccine at the animal testing phase.

The new federal funding includes $23 millionto support pre-clinical testing and clinical trials of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, essential steps to ensuring that vaccines are effective and safe for human use.

"What was my reaction? Ecstatic,"Gerdtssays. "Good to see the commitment from the Government to fund a Canadian vaccine for Canadians."

Next month could be a turning point for VIDO-InterVac, when ferrets chosen because their respiratory system is similar to that of humans are exposed to the novel coronavirus to see if the lab's vaccine candidate works. VIDO-InterVac is also testing other researchers' vaccines on hamsters.

Gerdts says the research is moving at an accelerated rate, and everyone is looking for a breakthrough before the pandemic's next potential wave of infections.

"The concern that we all have at the moment is whether there is another phase to this or not. And so having a vaccine for the next phase is absolutely critical. It will allow us to improve what we call herd immunity, to get more people vaccinated more people with an immune response in the population, and the better we all are protected in the future."

Gerdts' team is part of the World Health Organization's pandemic vaccine network, made up of expert groups of nearly 200 scientists and researchers from around the world.

They're working in tandem and exchanging notes in real time on medical servers and through weekly phone calls. There's even a vaccine tracker built by the Vaccine Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine that monitors the 60-plus COVID vaccines in development and their progress.

It's a remarkable coordinated effort that is breaking down scientific borders and academic bragging rights.

"The most important thing in all of this is not to be first," says virologist Paul Duprex from the University of Pittsburgh, who is part of the WHO vaccine braintrust.

Duprex says scientists usually compete to publish their findings first, for the credit that comes with it. The new virus has changed that, and there will be plenty of time to publish later.

"Let's just cut the crap and move forward and work together and be collegial. This is a worldwide problem, and this is a worldwide issue that we should solve together," he says.

Duprex adds that the WHO collaboration is speeding up the process to find a successful vaccine among the dozens in development.

"I'm really glad that we've got lots and lots of different options, because you know what's going to happen. Those vaccines are going to faIl at different stages in the testing process," says Duprex. "So therefore, if we have backups upon backups and backups, that allows us to get something across the finish line."

Infectious disease researcher Allison McGeer says this new, faster pace of global research means a vaccine could be developed more quickly and that could save lives.

"It's critically important to do it faster," says McGeer, who is with the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, part of Sinai Health in Toronto.

McGeer says that doesn't mean shortcutting safety trials, but rather streamlining research processes to get a safe and effective vaccine into people's arms faster.

"That allows a certain amount of creativity about how to do that. Whereas normally people would say, 'well, you know, I'm just not sure about that and I want to be absolutely sure about it.' Now there's a good reason for doing it differently and you can make processes for developing vaccines faster in general, which we all agree would be a good thing."

At VIDO-InterVac, Gerdts says if his team's potential vaccine passes the animal test next month, human trials will follow in the fall and pave the way for a possible vaccine in a year.

The new government funding is also building manufacturing capacity in Canada, including at VIDO-Intervac, which hopes to be in a position to produce up to 20 million doses of new vaccine during a pandemic.

And while all the work behind finding a vaccine is part of a global effort, Gerdts says it's a uniquely Canadian one,too.

"We're a Canadian team making a vaccine for Canadians, and so it's our highest priority to make sure that this vaccine will be available for Canadians. And we have received funding from the federal government and the provincial government to do this kind of research, so it's important that we make sure that Canadians will have access to our vaccine."

And while this pandemic is still in its early stages, Gerdts is already looking ahead to the next one.

He says good science can simulate the evolution of a pathogen in the lab, to help predict the next deadly virus and give the world time to prepare. The lessons of this pandemic, Dr. Gerdts says, are already too harsh.

"We're still talking about a year before we have a vaccine ready. People are dying right now, and the cost to the global economy is already in the trillions. We need to have vaccines ready for whatever the next pathogen might be. And this is where we have to push the envelope."

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'A race against the disease': Canadian researchers part of global effort to develop COVID-19 vaccine - CBC.ca

For 42-year-old Hannu Rajaniemi, the decision to shift his synthetic biology start-up's focus from creating cancer therapeutics to making a Covid-19 vaccine brought a sense of calm. Because watching coronavirus infect the world and not being part of the solution caused the scientist more torment than the complicated task of creating a vaccine in the middle of a pandemic.

"Before March the 10th, before we decided to jump on this, I was definitely feeling very anxious very, very worried about what was coming," Rajaniemi tellsCNBC Make It. "This is of course before things started to get really bad, but yeah there was some sense of powerlessness and worry that was in the background.

"Once we jumped on [creating a vaccine] that actually went away."

On that day, Rajaniemi was speaking in New Brunswick, New Jersey at a large biopharma companyabout the future of the industry. The company, which Rajaniemi declined to name, has a robust Covid-19 response program, and being there got Rajaniemi thinking his company's research could be applicable to fighting the virus.

So from March 10 through March 16, Rajaniemi pivoted his Cambridge, Massachusetts-headquarteredbusiness, Helix Nanotechnologies,from working to build a cancer vaccine to inventing a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

Within a week, "we had a significant amount of funds committed [to fund the Covid-19 vaccine research], we had a plan and we essentially completely shifted focus," Rajaniemi tells CNBC Make It.

The week it took for Helix Nano to shift gears "was pretty intense,"Rajaniemi tells CNBC Make It.

He didn't track his hours, but Rajaniemi remembers working through the night at least once.

Helix Nano was able to raise money from its "extremely supportive" investors for the pivot in about about 24 hours, he says.

The Helix Nano team dressed for a charity event, before the Covid-19 pandemic. Left to right:Taylor Gill, Nikhil Dhar, Nikolai Eroshenko (a co-founder), Hannu Rajaniemi (also a co-founder), Marianna Keaveney. (Photo is missing a more recent addition to the team, Justin Quinn.)

Photo courtesy: Helix Nano

Since the biotechnology Helix Nano was working on was flexible enough to also work for viruses, "we were able to articulate an accelerated path to the company's original mission push the technology forward rapidly while fighting the pandemic, then bring it back to cancer," he said. According to Rajaniemi, one investor said the Covid-19 pandemic "could be THE opportunity you needed" to show what the team can really accomplish.

As for his six employees, Rajaniemi inspired them to get behind the change by focusing on the broader benefit to society that a Covid-19 vaccine could provide. (Covid-19 is "rapidly becoming America's leading cause of death," according to The Washington Post from April 6 to April 12, for example,more people died from Covid-19 than cancer.)

"This is not a side project, or a way to get some extra money from investors in a crisis: This is the mission," Rajaniemi says he told his staff. "It might be the most important thing any of us ever do."

And it is "quite empowering" to be working on something that could help the world, Rajaniemi says. "There is this strong sense of clarity.... This is what we have to focus on. And so I think that's actually made it easier."

Helix Nano's technology made for a fairly easy pivot.

Rajaniemi, who was born and raised in Finland, founded Helix Nanotechnologies in 2013 with small angel checks from friends and family as well as grants to focus on cancer therapeutics.

And the business was personal: In 2015, Rajaniemi lost his 67-year-old mother to metastatic breast cancer.

From there, Helix Nano was accepted into Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator in 2017 and raised money from various sources includingStarlight Ventures and the Data Collective.

Some of the work Helix Nano was doing toward a cancer drug had already been showing "very promising efficacy in human lung cancer tumors engrafted into mice" before the pandemic, says Rajaniemi. "We were about to start raising a Series A on that data. The next fundraise would have taken us just short of human clinical trials."

The work centered around manipulating messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), or genetic code that acts as a messenger in the human body. Helix Nanotechnology's strategy for generating a novel coronavirus vaccine also centers on mRNA.

Helix Nanotechnology's cancer drug would have mRNA deliver a message to kill cancers cells andattract immune cells to the tumor. Its cancer vaccine would use mRNA deliver a message to make a cancer cell more visible to the human body's immune system so that it could attack the cancer.

The idea behind that cancer vaccine is the same as Helix Nano's Covid-19 vaccine, except that the vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 goes after the virus instead of cancer cells, says Rajaniemi.The mRNA delivers a message to make parts of the novel coronavirus visible to the immune system.

Helix Nano lab in Cambridge, Mass.

Photo courtesy Helix Nano

Because mRNA is manipulated the same way, "regardless of the instructions it contains," Helix Nanotechnologies had to change no infrastructure or hardware in its lab to transition from working on cancer therapeutics to a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, Rajaniemi says.

"It's like computer code that can be easily changed and iterated with. Before we were making mRNA and injecting into mice, and measuring the results. Now we are also making mRNA and injecting it into mice," he says.

"That was part of the attraction," according to Rajaniemi.

Rajaniemi believes that the vaccine he and his team are creating is important because he says it is different from other novel coronavirus vaccines in the works. (There aremore than 40 SARS-CoV-2 vaccines currently under development, according tovaccine consultant Stanley Plotkin, whoinvented the rubella vaccine in 1964.)

Rajaniemi explains vaccine technology with a metaphor: "A vaccine is like a mug shot that you show the immune system" by injecting it into the body. "So it's a picture of the bad guy that the immune system goes after," he says.

A potential problem, however, is that viruses mutate, which means a specific "mug shot" might no longer look like the mutated "bad guy" the immune system needs to fight.

So one of the approaches Helix Nano is pursuing "amounts to essentially showing so many mug shots from so many different angles that, no matter how the virus changes, it will be very hard for it to completely disguise itself [from] the immune system," Rajaniemi says. The idea is akin to flooding the system with mugshots a "saturation," Rajaniemi calls it.

"While SARS-CoV-2 appears to be mutating more slowly than, say, influenza, we can't discount the possibility that as the virus changes, the first wave of vaccines may lose efficacy," he says.

"The approach we are developing should be robust against this, and may even provide protection from all future coronaviruses. So we want to help solve this problem once and for all, not just for this pandemic but future ones as well."

Indeed, producing a vaccine that can identify and protect against multiple potential mutations of the virus "will be of critical importance," says vaccine specialistBarbara Rath, the co-founder and chair of The Vienna Vaccine Safety Initiative.

"If we can, we'd like to end up with a vaccine that will protect us not only from one specific pandemic coronavirus, but from other variants of SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, as well," she says, referring to the coronaviruses that cause Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

"Whether or not this is possible ... is not yet entirely clear, but it is feasible," Rath says.

On April 3, Helix Nanotechnologies injected its first novel coronavirus vaccines into miceto see if there is an immune response, and over the course of a few weeks it will be testing hundreds more vaccine designs by injecting them into mice.

In two to three months, its vaccines could be ready to move to clinical trials in humans, Rajaniemi says.

That means the now familiar 12- to 18-month timeframe "is probably realistic" for getting a vaccine to market, Rajaniemi says (though he personally believes that can be accelerated).

The timeframe also depends on whether the Food and Drug Administration hastens its approval process for vaccines and how much manufacturing capacity there is to produce the vaccine. (Vaccine expert Plotkin says there is currently enough capacity to produce a vaccine for the United States, but not for the world population, though the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently pledged to invest in manufacturing infrastructure.)

In the meantime, Rajaniemi, who as a theoretical physicist does not have to work in the lab, is in constant touch with his team in Cambridge while workingsix to seven days a week from his home in San Francisco, he says.

But then, he wasn't expecting it to be easy.

"It's certainly been quite intense it feels like we've jumped off a cliff and are building an airplane in mid-air," Rajaniemi says.

See also:

These are the new hot spots of innovation in the time of coronavirus

Bill Gates: How the coronavirus pandemic can help the world solve climate change

COVID-19 pandemic proves the need for 'social robots,' 'robot avatars' and more, say experts

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What it's like to invent a coronavirus vaccine in the middle of a pandemic - CNBC

The lesson learned from a long history of using vaccines to fight massively disruptive diseases like smallpox and Ebola is that the vaccine itself is not enough. Like a good punch line, its all about the delivery.

The smallpox vaccine was an average one with a limited supply. But small, dedicated teams implemented a winning strategy for it. They focused on rapidly identifying individuals with smallpox and then vaccinating people in their circle or ring of potential contacts, creating a cordon of immunity that kept the disease out. The same strategy was recently employed with impressive results in the fight against Ebola.

Today, all eyes are on efforts to develop a treatment to immunize people against Covid-19. And the pace of progress has been impressive. Just a few months after the disease crossed the Rubicon from bats to humans, its genetic code has been sequenced and published, diagnostic tests are available, and vaccine development is well underway. There are now many candidates at various stages in the pipeline.

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Experts predict a year or more before we have an approved vaccine. Although that can seem like an eternity to many, it would be the fastest development in history.

There are many obstacles to overcome, starting with safety tests to determine that a vaccine doesnt make the disease worse. That was a concern with a candidate developed in 2003 against severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a different coronavirus. And it was an issue a few years ago with a vaccine against dengue fever.

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A vaccine also must produce sufficient protection in older populations, given the age-related deterioration of the immune system, called immune senescence.

But the focus on the therapy itself can obscure complicated issues surrounding its delivery. They will be equally decisive in determining whether a vaccine can vanquish this virus.

For example, it is currently unclear how many doses will be needed to fight a disease that will have already expanded into most of the human population. The number of people who have developed natural immunity by the time vaccines arrive will determine whether we need millions or billions of doses. Rapidly producing billions of doses vastly exceeds current vaccine production capacity and would likely require costly repurposing of other facilities, or building even more expensive new manufacturing plants. Yet uncertainty about demand can make it difficult to secure sufficient investment at a fair price per dose.

Although hundreds of millions of dollars for vaccine development have already have been promised through the combined efforts of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and their partners at the World Health Organization, World Bank, UNICEF; and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the investment needed for vaccine development is $2 billion.

But investors, companies, and governments need to be assured that we will get it right that we wont underproduce and fall short of what we need, but also wont over produce and waste this unparalleled investment. When a vaccine became available for the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, the outbreak had ended and many doses were simply discarded.

Even if we get the vaccine we need, we mustnt fail to get it to the people who need it. We are facing a potential shortage of health care workers to manage mass vaccination efforts, and risk increasing disease transmission by asking people to come for Covid-19 vaccination. If there are not enough doses for everyone, deciding who should get vaccinated within and across countries will need to be prioritized; although this may be a function of whether the vaccine works well enough in particular populations, such as older adults.

Communication around the vaccines efficacy and safety need to be carefully planned and monitored so as not fuel mistrust in a novel vaccine.

All of these challenges present an opportunity for innovation, including creating vaccine formulations that dont require refrigeration and, better yet, are needle-free. Several years ago, the MenAfriVac meningitis vaccine was rapidly deployed to great effect in the Sahel region of Africa, in part because it could remain stable for several days without refrigeration. If we get started now, it might even be possible to develop a skin patch that could be sent through the mail and self-administered. Thinking about new ways of delivery and who can administer vaccines could help change the game.

All of these issues can be addressed, but the work must start immediately, not the day the vaccine is licensed. The keys are to:

The novel coronavirus is not the most aggressive pathogen that disease fighters have ever faced. But its fast and elusive. Our strategy for fighting it must be as novel, agile, and global as the virus itself. The battle starts in the lab, but it will be won or lost in the delivery.

Lois Privor-Dumm is the director of policy, advocacy, and communications, and director of adult vaccines, for the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Naor Bar-Zeev, Ph.D., is the centers deputy director and director of epidemiology. Maria Deloria Knoll, Ph.D., is the centers associate director for science.

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The success of a Covid-19 vaccine will hinge on its delivery - STAT

UM Researchers Working To Develop COVID-19 Vaccine

University of Montana researchers are working on a vaccination for COVID-19. The Center for Translational Medicine received $2.5 million in funding for the project from the National Institutes of Health.

Director Jay Evans said the lab develops vaccines for the flu, tuberculosis and deadly opioids such as fentanyl. He explained there is always a sense of urgency to the work they do, but coronavirus means even more immediacy.

"Youre coming into work everyday, in the midst of this shutdown: Its important to know that youre doing it for a reason," Evans said.

The 40-person lab specializes in vaccine ingredients that stimulate the immune system. In this case, the team only needs one part of the coronavirus to work their magic. They are trying to find a way to stop the virus' spike protein, the part in charge of clinging onto human cells.

"So if you can block that interaction with an antibody, you can stop that person from getting infected," Evans said.

But working with coronavirus means lab members are taking additional safety measures while working on the vaccine. Only about a dozen people are allowed in the lab at one time, and as many team as possible are working from home.

The lab is also working with the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and Boston Childrens Hospital. Evans expects a years-long process to get from lab testing to manufacturing a vaccine at scale, including up to a year and a half before entering the first phase of clinical trials.

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UM Researchers Working To Develop COVID-19 Vaccine - MTPR

Dozens of companies and an army of researchers are trying to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but getting one approved in 18 months or less is far from a sure thing.

Dozens of companies and an army of researchers are trying to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but getting one approved in 18 months or less is far from a sure thing.

Photo: Jeffrey Hamilton/Getty Images

Dozens of companies and an army of researchers are trying to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but getting one approved in 18 months or less is far from a sure thing.

Dozens of companies and an army of researchers are trying to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but getting one approved in 18 months or less is far from a sure thing.

The COVID-19 vaccine rush: Is 12 to 18 months realistic?

For more coverage, visit our complete coronavirus section here.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Trump administrations point man in the fight against COVID-19, has said a safe vaccine for the virus could be ready for use in 12 to 18 months. Thats the same timeline the World Health Organization is working on.

History suggests it will take longer. The vaccine that holds the record for fastest approval time, Mumpsvax (mumps virus vaccine live), took four years before it was ready. Scientists have been trying to develop an HIV vaccine for decades without success.

On Wednesday, Severin Schwan, the head of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, described Faucis 12-18 month estimate as ambitious and said a vaccine most likely wont be ready until the end of 2021 at the earliest.

With confirmed global coronavirus cases now topping 2.5 million, the pressure to develop a vaccine is mounting, and dozens of firms and scores of scientists are working toward that goal. Here are some of the contenders:

Moderna bankrolled: Last week, Modernas mRNA-1273 vaccine received a $483 million grant from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to ramp up late-stage trials and vaccine production. The company intends to start a phase 3 study in the second quarter and could start phase 3 this fall.

The vaccine uses a genetic molecule called mRNA as its base. Scientists generate the mRNA in the lab and, rather than directly injecting SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus) into patients, instead will introduce this mRNA.

The bad news is no vaccine built from a virus genetic material has ever earned approval. Because of mRNAs unproven track record, global analytics firm Clarivate estimated Modernas vaccine has just a 5% chance of success and that approval would take 5.2 years. Successful results in phases 2 and 3 could change those predictions, a Clarivate spokesperson told the drug industry publication Fierce Pharma.

Inovio "confident": Clarivate also evaluated biotech company Inovios DNA vaccine INO-4800, which is now in clinical testing. Clarivates algorithm predicted a 15% probability of success for the vaccine and approval timeline of 5.5 years.

Inovio told Fierce Pharma it remains "highly confident in the viability and likelihood of success of our vaccine candidate for the novel coronavirus."

Janssen's gamble: Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, aims to start human trials for its vaccine by September 2020 at the latest. The company says it plans to be able to manufacture 600 to 900 million coronavirus vaccine doses by the first quarter of 2021, increasing to a billion over the year.

"Normally, companies would not invest in their manufacturing scale-up until they were deep into phase 2 and starting phase 3. Theyd have more clarity that a product was going to work," Phyllis Arthur, vice president for infectious diseases and diagnostic policy at Biotechnology Innovation Organization, told Quartz.

A British vaccine by autumn? A University of Oxford team will begin human trials of a potential coronavirus vaccine Thursday, according to the Independent.

One of the scientists said if the trials are successful, millions of doses of vaccine could be ready by the fall. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said reaching this stage in normal times would "take years."

Hancock announced he was allocating 20 million ($24 million) to the Oxford team and a further 22.5 million to Imperial College, whose scientists are also working on a vaccine.

Israeli scientist targets virus weak link: Prof. Jonathan Gershoni from Tel Aviv University's (TAU) School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology says his laboratory is "two-thirds of the way" toward developing a vaccine for COVID-19.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Gershoni is focusing on the virus's Receptor Binding Motif (RBM), part of the virus' "spike" protein, which attaches itself and infects a target human cell. Once the viral membrane fuses with that cell, the genetic blueprint of the virus can enter the cell and begin infection.

"The idea is to recreate, to reconstitute, to construct an RBM of COVID-19 virus and use it as the vaccine," he told the Post. "That is to say, you would inject a small 50 amino-acid sequence and it would allow our immune system to focus on it and create antibodies that would directly target the virus at its weak spot."

Development of such an RBM-based vaccine should take months, but it then would need to be tested in clinical trials, taking up to a year, Gershoni says.

200,000 doses in Texas: Dr. Peter Hortez, a dean at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, told MSNBC his team has already 200,000 doses of a coronavirus vaccine ready for human clinical trials. Even so, he says a 12-18 month timeline for a vaccine would be "unprecedented.

One of the biggest obstacles to fast-tracking a vaccine are the time-consuming human trials necessary to ensure its safety while demonstrating its efficacy.But given the magnitude of the pandemic, some members of Congress are suggesting a short cut.

Volunteers allowing themselves to be intentionally infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 could accelerate the development of a vaccine, said 35 members of the U.S. House of Representatives in a letter Tuesday to the Food and Drug Administration and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the journal Science reported. The controversial strategy is backed by both Democratic and Republican members of the group.

The legislators also are pushing the idea of parallel, simultaneous testing of different doses of a vaccine rather than the traditional sequential testing, which starts with participants getting the lowest dose first and gradually building up the dosage as the trial proceeds. The strategy could expedite testing from small groups to larger trials.

Scientists are divided on "human challenge" trials, with some arguing the risks are too great.

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Mike Moffitt is an SFGATE Digital Reporter. Email: moffitt@sfgate.com. Twitter: @Mike_at_SFGate

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The COVID-19 vaccine rush: Is 12 to 18 months realistic? - SF Gate

MISSOULA There's a long legacy of medical research in Western Montana, from Rocky Mountain Labs to GSK in Hamilton, and on to the University of Montana. Now, that know-how might help resolve the coronavirus pandemic.

UM just received 2-and-a-half million dollars to help find a "candidate" for a COVID-19 vaccine, telling Senator Steve Daines the labs are already hard at work, building on a foundation of progress on everything from the flu to opioid addiction.

"It's exciting. It's not only exciting for me," said U.M. Center for Transitional Medicine Director Dr. Jay Evans. "It's also exciting for the people in the lab, working on something with such a high local and national concern."

"It reminds me of what happened back in the early Fifties with polio and Dr. Salk. When they announced they had a vaccine for polo everybody cheered," said Daines. "The announcement, hopefully sooner versus later when we have a vaccine for COVID-19, you're going to have a nation cheer. And to think the University of Montana is going to have a big part in that is very exciting."

"We're looking at different types of antigens, different parts of the virus that can be used. We're looking at different amino stimulants that trigger the type of immune response that you want against a viral infection. And we're looking at different ways of delivering the vaccine," said Evans. "All those technologies exist, and our platform pair here at U of M, and so we're combining them in different ways to try to solve this problem with coronavirus. And make the most effective, safe vaccine that could be used in people."

Daines says the UM focus fits with his concern to have more federal money to help with research, not just treating the pandemic's "symptoms".

"I found that there wasn't enough resources placed against a cure," said the Senator. "And that cure is getting these vaccines, these drugs, these therapeutics that will protect the American people. Protect Montanans. And I was able to secure 10-billion dollars in that funding package that focused exactly on that."

However, there are other challenges as well. Evans told the senator that lab space is at a premium. That's something that they'd like to solve in the future here at the University of Montana.

Some relief will come by moving labs to a new building this summer. But UM says the real solution would be a new building for an institute.

There's a number of things that we do that have national import and which most of those fundings are going out of state, and the jobs are going out of state," said U.M. V.P. for Research and Creative Scholarship Scoot Whittenburg. "And we could actually do some more efforts here and actually keep more of those jobs and more of those dollars here."

There were 15-people when the former GSK researchers came to UM 4-years ago. Now there are 40.

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University of Montana researchers focusing on COVID-19 vaccines - KPAX-TV

The underlying theme of the protest was that Vermont, bleeding young people who cannot find the kind of jobs that would allow them to afford to live here, cannot afford to lose already limited four-year college opportunities.

If there was ever an example of the overarching point, that Vermont needs more smart people, it came two days later, when another protest took place here.

The protest, demanding that Governor Phil Scott relax his stay-at-home orders, was organized by a gun-rights group, even though gun shops have remained open because Scott deemed them essential. You can find guns and ammo in Vermont much easier than you can disinfectant wipes.

The organizers had hoped to cause the same disruption and gain the same attention the pro-education protesters did. But, even in Vermont, its hard to tie up traffic with a handful of pickup trucks. The protest outside the State House drew more journalists than demonstrators, who never numbered more than a dozen.

One demonstrator complained he had lost both of his jobs and worried about feeding his kids. He seemed pretty sympathetic, until I learned the yellow DONT TREAD ON ME" flag he was waving was signed by Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy nut job who claimed the Sandy Hook massacre of schoolchildren in Connecticut was staged as a ruse for implementing gun control.

Inside the State House, Governor Scott was sympathetic to the protesters but wouldnt budge on his aggressive mitigation measures, which have been credited with making Vermont one of the states with the lowest infection and fatality rates.

Theres nobody more frustrated, more eager to get the economy going than me, but Im going to continue to make decisions based on the science, Scott said.

Scott, a Republican, is the antithesis of his Georgia counterpart, Brian Kemp, who is defying science in rushing to get his states economy up and running again. Scott is from the same mold as other independent-minded New England governors, including his friends, neighbors and fellow Republicans, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who take their COVID-19 counsel from doctors and scientists, not Fox News.

Outside the State House, the temperatures hovered around freezing and the wind whipped snow flurries, mocking spring. A group of nurses from Central Vermont Medical Center, wearing masks, blue scrubs, and weary eyes, showed up to stare down the protesters. They take care of people infected with COVID-19 and didnt want the protest to go unchallenged.

One of the nurses held a handmade sign that said: Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Someone in a passing car agreed with the nurses, shouting at protesters, Dont infect the rest of us, you idiots!

The pro-education protest got results, at least temporarily. Trustees postponed voting on the plan to close the three colleges.

The protest on Wednesday, which was scheduled to last five hours but petered out after two, worked, too, at least in that it gave a bunch of bored reporters a reason to go outside and cover something besides the governors daily briefing.

It also succeeded in making it clear that we need more than a vaccine against the coronavirus.

Life wont go back to anything resembling normal until there is a vaccine for COVID-19. But, while theyre at it, heres hoping researchers are able to come up with a vaccine for ignorance, because it poses a bigger, longer-lasting threat to normality than the pandemic.

And when that second, great, scientific breakthrough comes, Brian Kemp has first dibs.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.

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We need more than a COVID-19 vaccine - The Boston Globe

As the U.S. moves past 50,000 coronavirus deaths, our team in Washington, D.C. is examining the issues that likely won't be featured tonight during primetime cable news -- including how federal lawmakers are playing a role in the reopening of their states. You can watch our D.C. team's original reporting in a livestream at 9/8c.

Even as the confirmed U.S. death toll from the coronavirus soared past 50,000, Georgia, Oklahoma and Alaska began loosening lockdown orders Friday on their pandemic-wounded businesses, despite warnings from health experts that the gradual steps toward normalcy might be happening too soon.

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Update on University of Chicagos research for a Covid-19 vaccine - WGN TV Chicago

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJIn a major setback to efforts to combat the relentless global pandemic, a potential Covid-19 vaccine from a major pharmaceutical giant reportedly hit a snag Thursday after extensive tests confirmed the once-promising method of inoculation was actually just a shotgun. Despite very encouraging trials in which every subject who received the vaccine developed complete immunity to the novel coronavirus, further study has revealed several serious side effects, among them the fact that 100% of these participants also had their heads blown clean off, said Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky, explaining that the vaccine had prevented the virus from infecting any of the brain tissue or blood that was found splattered on laboratory walls, but that researchers later discovered the immunization agent had merely been a 20-gauge double-barrel shotgun. We dont know for certain if the firearms discharge is causing this severe brain damage or if the subjects were simply predisposed to such ailments, so further study is required. But it may turn out this is one of those cases where the cure is worse than the disease. Fortunately, we will soon begin human clinical trials on other possible treatments, such as jumping off bridges and ingesting huge handfuls of tranquilizers. In his most recent press briefing, President Trump dismissed the new findings and said Americans had nothing to lose if they wanted to use shotguns as a preventative measure.

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Potentially Promising Covid-19 Vaccine Hits Roadblock After Testing Reveals Its Just Shotgun - The Onion