Slashdot Mirror
Newly Developed RNA-Based Vaccine Could Offer Lifelong Protection From the Flu
An anonymous reader writes "A new experimental flu vaccine made out of messenger RNA that may work for life is now being developed. German researchers said on Sunday that the vaccine, made of the genetic material that controls the production of proteins, protected animals against influenza and, unlike traditional vaccines, it may work for life and can potentially be manufactured quickly enough to stop a pandemic (abstract)."
Mutate you into some sort of strange half-man/half-flu monstrosity. 50/50. Could go either way.
Are we seriously trying to bring about the zombie apocalypse now?
Or? It could replicate like DUPLICATE STORIES on Slashdot!
The Abstract and Medical Daily link don't give enough information to give me the full story, but this does not appear to be related in any way to the previous Slashdot Self-Boosting vaccine story (using viruses capable of persisting in latency as carriers).
This is a mRNA-based vaccine, of which there are currently no commercially available examples in existence. The vaccine material itself should be degraded and eliminated in very short order, with no self-replication and no persistant "self-boosting" effect; the duration of immunity in humans appears to be merely conjecture on the part of the Medical Daily writers.
Afaik this class of RNA-based vaccines is interesting but still very much at the research stage. There's been a large area of research on whether they could play a role in fighting cancer, as another example.
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But here is why it will never happen. The world's pharmaceutical companies that make money through yearly flu vaccinations will be fighting this thing tooth and nail. The profit loss from effectively eradicating the flu virus stands to be in the billions. Big Pharma will try and get it banned, labeled as unsafe, or do some other shifty thing to see that this idea is buried.
If the vaccine works in people,
That is the catch. It has not worked so far in people, or animals for that matter. But $scientist speculates it might. Till more data comes through we should soak the RNA in snake oil before freeze drying it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In Finland (and possibly the other Nordic countries whose welfare states served as a model for Finland's) you don't get a sick day unless you visit your neighbourhood's clinic in the morning and get a doctor to sign off on the sick day. On the plus side, you get paid for the day.
Same in Australia. Except that the vast majority of doctors will just go "yeah, whatever" and give you a medical certificate. On one occasion, I've gone into a clinic on a work day, and the first thing the doctor said was "how long do you need off?"
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
In these modern day's there are only two breaks a wage-slave has in the last bits of the year: winter break and the flu... :-D
Before you know it the boss will "offer" you this for free because it is "good for your health" and BANG! You only have the winter break.
That means that you HAVE to break a leg or stick a skying pole in your left eye in order to squeeze out a little more... So in the long term it is actually bad for your health! Skying is dumb, and ending up at an ER room (that looks like a Kabul market after a bomb attack) by accident is even more stupid. But when actually forced to do so by your boss... man what time do we live in?
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
True, though in the Nordic countries you typically get ~6 weeks' vacation anyway, so there's less incentive to misuse sick days. It's mainly in the US where you'd want to, and there, they can't require you to see a doctor, because you might not even have health insurance.
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Unfortunately, some of the more abusive low level employers still require a doctor's note anyway. One notorious telemarketing company in my town almost didn't give a dude his sick days because he didn't call in every day he was sick - the guy was in the hospital. It was only when the guy got the hospital itself off that they grudgingly gave him his time.
Compare this to my current office, where if you so much as sneeze the boss looks at you with narrowed eyes and asks if you'd rather telecommute that day, rather than risk infecting the entire office.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I can't really see how this technique could offer lifelong protection from the flu, the current encarnation currently does not and it's not clear how it would all work.
First of all, the vaccine they developed is a "hardened" mRNA that encodes the manufacture of a particular varient one of the two proteins (hemagglutinin or HA) that are found on the surface of a flu virus (the other one is neuraminidase or NA). In this case they chose the recent H1 part of the H1N1 varient was recently going around. This mRNA tricks the host's own cells to produce this H1 protein which triggers the immune response. In contrast, the "traditional" flu shot just has HA and NA proteins (usually made from dead flu viruses grown in eggs, but sometimes made in labs) in it along with some other "stuff" like adjuvents, to amp up the immune response.
Unfortunatly this particular vaccine is like traditional vaccines in that it primes the immune system to look for HA/NA proteins, and these are the flu proteins that mutate all the time, so it would just provide life-line protection for one particular strain (and some close relatives), kinda like the current flu shot.
The current breakthrough was in "hardening" the mRNA so that it isn't dissolved in you blood. These researchers discovered a protein called protamine can bind with the mRNA so that it can make it into enough cells so that the cellular mechanims can transcribe it into the encoded protein into H1.
There is some promise that this technique could be easily adapted to target part of the flu surface proteins that don't mutate as much (whereas the current technique is mostly about refining HA/NA proteins so might not be applicable to something else) but that lifelong protection from the flu using a technique like this seems like a dream. I don't think anyone knows how to do that yet, although many folks are working on it and most of them aren't just relying on just stimulating a human immune response.
On the other hand, as with most hype, there is a kernel of something there. The current crop of modern flu-treatments (like tamiflu) target the NA part of the flu virus (technically they are neuraminidase inhibitors, so they interfere with part of the virus reproduction cycle). Unfortuantly the NA part is the faster mutating protein and there have been cases where mutation in the NA part of the virus can circumvent these modern treatments. The HA part mutates more slowly and as I mentioned above, this particular treatment has been steered to target the HA part. Who knows, maybe you'd get a vaccine with mRNA for every HA subtype they know about***. Of course that is until there is another mutation. I'm guessing that on this basis they've annointed this new thing as having the potential "lifelong" protection from the flu. As for how this would be significantly different than just giving someone a regular flu shot with all the known HA subtypes, I don't see it. Seems like a bit of hype to me compared to what other folks are working on (e.g., specific artificial antibodies that target all HA subtypes).
*** AFAIK, there are 17 types of HA, although viruses that infect humans don't appear to have that many variations, so maybe you could get away with just H1, H2, H3, H5 (the ones known to infect humans).
The point of this new vaccine technology appears to primarily be one of cost. The idea is instead of vaccinating with dead / attenuated virus, or injecting viral proteins into someone to stimulate an immune response and thereby immunity, you can use RNA that will express the viral proteins in human cells (thus amplify the signal compared to injecting viral proteins directly) and get the immune system to generate antibodies against that viral protein. The RNA is designed to make only a part of the viral protein that is conserved, so that the antibodies will hopefully recognize a multitude of similar viruses - the reason that you have to get a flu shot every year is your body chose a site on a viral protein that is not conserved (which is most of it, thanks evolution), so last year's antibodies won't recognize this year's flu virus.
But the nice thing about the system is (1) it is cheap to make RNA, especially compared to purified proteins, and (2) the RNA can be turned into a dehydrated powder and stored without any special conditions (i.e. cold and only for X amount of time), unlike virus- or protein-based vaccines. Cheaper vaccines means you can immunize more people for less money - but also animals like pigs which are a reservoir of flu virus. Biggest problem with getting rid of viruses like flu is they get to hide out in non-human hosts, mutate, and come back to infect people whose immune systems can no longer recognize the virus. Smallpox, which as far as we know only infected humans, couldn't do this, so once enough people were immunized, the virus had no one to infect and went extinct (outside of a couple research lab freezers).
If the company's willing to pay for the confirmation, then I agree, it seems valid. But not otherwise.
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In the United States it is wise to call in sick and come in the next day with sunburn (in summer) or raccoon face (from ski googles, in winter) just so the boss knows you aren't afraid of him and can replace the job before he can have your password disabled.
Bonus points telling the boss you aren't going to do any work the day after your sick day because you are so hung-over. Doubly true if he's a recovering alcoholic or has a religious objection to drinking.
Make sure the bastard knows his place.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How is this not GMO Humans?
Not a fan of cannibalisim, so I couldn't care less.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.