The biology of coronavirus COVID-19 - including research and treatments

Is this a means of boosting the astra zeneca efficiency and extending age ranges of trial group?

I was wondering how you monitor side effects etc if you use 2 completely different types ?

It also seemed a bit strange to me that if ackower initial dose boosted efficacy that a 2 lower dose option was not tested ?

Musings of a sleep deprived parent may not stack up at this time in the morning though !

 

Or providing some relevance for an inferior product, take your pick...

If there is a no-covid-vaccination control group, then you monitor as usual, with any conclusions only being generalisable for the combination protocol, not the individual vaccines. If they don't have such a control group, then it is indeed cause for concern.

 

Study of Healthcare Workers Shows COVID-19 Immunity Lasts Many Months
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/...rs-shows-covid-19-immunity-lasts-many-months/

 

• sC5b9 plasma levels are elevated in children with SARS-CoV-2 infection, even if they have minimal symptoms of COVID-19.
  
  
• A high proportion of children with SARS-CoV-2 infection met clinical criteria for TMA.

https://ashpublications.org/bloodad...nce-of-thrombotic-microangiopathy-in-children

Regarding sC5b9 and ME/CFS, there is a report of a patient who for the duration of the illness had increased levels of sC5b9. When the patient recovered, levels normalized. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3028106/

 

Effiacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine seems poor compared to it's rivals.

There were clear population differences (lack of people over 55) between the "LD/SD" and "SD/SD" groups, along with wide overlapping confidence intervals suggesting the difference in efficacy could well be down to chance.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32661-1/fulltext

 

India's drug regulatory agency reportedly rejected the application for emergency use authorization for the Oxford/AstraZeneca covid vaccine for lack of data.

(The manufacturer in India is the Serum Institute of India, not AstraZeneca)

https://www.reuters.com/article/hea...a-vaccine-pending-more-data-ndtv-idUSL1N2IP0W

 

...It's official. (The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is called Covishield in India) https://thehindu.com/news/national/serum-bharat-biotech-covid-vaccine-applications-put-on-hold/article33290974.ece…

The application for Covaxin was rejected too.

 

NY Magazine: We Had the Vaccine the Whole Time
By David Wallace-Wells

Curious about @Snow Leopard 's thoughts on this.

 

The vaccine did exist the almost whole time - as soon as the virus was sequenced the mRNA vaccines can be created right away.
The preclinical studies and all trial phases were heavily overlapped. Dose discovery was mixed with initial efficacy and side effects in "phase 1/2" trials for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research

If sequencing data was released sooner and vaccine developers started work sooner, this could have saved maybe a month. But all of this requires substantial investment, without any knowledge that there would even be a worldwide pandemic - this is what held back vaccines for SARS-1.

The biggest difficulties in terms of time was ramping up the scale of production and rapid recruitment for phase 3 trials. Before this pandemic, that knowledge and capacity did not exist. But given the billions of dollars that governments have thrown at a wide variety of vaccines, along with commercial investment, it is possible that this process, in terms of future pandemics could occur maybe 2 months sooner. Phase 3 trials also require significant follow up time to monitor both safety and efficacy.

So we're still looking at around 6 months from the point at which it is known that there is a global pandemic to the point at which a safe and effective vaccine is first approved. In historical terms this would be considered very impressive!

But I think there is too much focus on vaccines as the saviour, when there are other lessons to be learned. A number of countries have shown that vaccines are not necessary to eliminate community transmission of the virus.

 

Yea, I was day dreaming about this; the bit where you have the amino acid sequence, for the virus spike protein, to identifying the genetic (RNA) code for that protein (the vaccine in essence) seems really quick - maybe two weeks? Since I don't know the underlying science I'm wowed by it e.g. how do you identify which bit of the virus's genome codes for that protein? Mind you how do you identify the spike protein ---

I assume though that this technology cannot be applied as easily/quickly to all virus's e.g. I'm not aware of an AIDs vaccine--- happy to be proved wrong though!

 

Moved post
This is a Royal Society of Medicine Webinar
https://www.rsm.ac.uk/resources/rsm-live/

Food for thought?

Episode 54: One year on, what have we learned?


Date: Thursday 10 December 2020
Time: 12:30pm - 1:15pm GMT
Dear Sir/Madam,

A year on from the first recorded cases of COVID-19, Professor Tim Spector joins us this afternoon to discuss how the virus has spread through the UK, and the success of the measures put in place to suppress it.

Lead scientist on the ZOE COVID Symptom Study app, Professor Spector has spent the year tracking the virus using symptom data inputted by 4.5m people across the country.

Using insights from the ‘largest community monitoring of COVID in the world’, Professor Spector will speak about the impact of national lockdowns, firebreaks, and the tier system.

He will also tell RSM President Professor Roger Kirby about his predictions for the vaccine roll-out, and whether we can expect a third wave in the new year.

As usual, there will be plenty of opportunities for Q&A during this webinar. We invite you to submit your questions when you register or during the live broadcast.

Join in the conversation online using #RSMLive
Follow us on Twitter: @RoySocMed
Guest speaker
Professor Tim Spector OBE
Lead Scientist, ZOE COVID Symptom Study app, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Director of the TwinsUK Registry at King's College London

Free to watch on Zoom. Register now to join live today at 12:30pm GMT.

Reply-To: rsm.replies@rsm.ac.uk
Head of Department
Professor Tim Spector
MB MSc MD FRCP
Tim Spector is a Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Director of the TwinsUK Registry at Kings College, London.

He trained originally in rheumatology and epidemiology. In 1992 he moved into genetic epidemiology and founded the UK Twins Registry, of 13,000 twins, which is the richest collection of genotypic and phenotypic information worldwide.

He is past President of the International Society of Twin Studies and directs the European Twin Registry Consortium (Discotwin) and collaborates with over 120 centres worldwide.

He has demonstrated the genetic basis of a wide range of common complex traits, many previously thought to be mainly due to ageing and environment. Through genetic association studies (GWAS), his group have found over 500 novel gene loci in over 50 disease areas.

He has published over 800 research articles and is ranked as being in the top 1% of the world’s most published scientists by Reuters. He held a prestigious European Research Council senior investigator award in epigenetics and is a NIHR Senior Investigator.

His current work focuses on omics and the microbiome and directs the crowdfunded British Gut microbiome project.

Together with an international team of leading scientists including researchers from King’s College London, Massachusetts General Hospital, Tufts University, Stanford University and nutritional science company ZOE he is conducting the largest scientific nutrition research project, showing that individual responses to the same foods are unique, even between identical twins. You can find more on https://joinzoe.com/

He is a prolific writer with several popular science books and a regular blog, focusing on genetics, epigenetics and most recently microbiome and diet (The Diet Myth).

He is in demand as a public speaker and features regularly in the media.

For more information visit Professor Tim Spector's research profile.

 

I haven't watched this myself so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6ZY_GKlyC8

RSM COVID-19 Series | Episode 54: One year on, what have we learned?

 

I had big hopes for this vaccine (the UQ "molecular clamp" stabilised subunit vaccine). But I didn't know how they had engineered the "clamp" using a HIV GP41 glycoprotein fragment of sufficient length to be recognised by T-cell receptors.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/...t-options-do-we-now-have-20201211-p56mlj.html

The key point is that they did anticipate such a risk, which is why they tested for it. The question is why did it proceed so far knowing this risk?

Given the importance of accurate HIV test diagnostics around the world, they've decided not to continue with development of this iteration of the "molecular clamp".

 

Genetic mechanisms of critical illness in Covid-19

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03065-y

 

Interesting to see low expression of interferon receptor. Prof Holgate's team in S'hampton had good results using inhaled interferon to reduce length and severity of illness. They had developed it to help those with severe asthma/COPD, originally. He mentioned it in his talk.

 

This is a pretty cool study that showcases what GWAS studies like DecodeME can do - though the authors had the advantage of knowing that there are strong genetic factors influencing severity of viral illnesses.

Amongst the authors are DecodeME's Dr Veronique Vitart and @Chris Ponting. Veronique has kindly written a blog about the study that will come out on Monday.

 

Study covered by the BBC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54832563

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1337574470878449665


In particular antibodies to interferon 1.

 

Blog about this study and how it relates to DecodeME, https://www.s4me.info/threads/decodeme-uk-me-cfs-dna-study-underway.15604/page-23