Ebola Nose Spray Vaccine Protects Monkeys

First time accepted submitter GeekyKhan writes A new needle-free vaccine has proven to be 100% effective at stopping the transmission of Ebola in monkeys, and it could spell a breakthrough in the battle against the disease. The vaccine is administered through a nasal spray using a common cold virus genetically engineered to carry Ebola DNA. From NBC: "The vaccine uses a common cold virus genetically engineered to carry a tiny piece of Ebola DNA. Sprayed up the nose, it saved all nine monkeys tested for infection. But now the research is dead in the water without funding, Maria Croyle of the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Pharmacy said. 'Now we are at the crossroads, trying to figure out where to get the funding and resources to continue,' Croyle told NBC News."

Comments

Where is

[Bin_jammin]

Jenny McCarthy to protest this? After all, who can really care for all those poor autistic monkeys this will create?

Re:Where is

[aliquis]

And the vaccine contains GMOs!

ALSO IT'S A VACCINE!!

I don't trust science, I trust God! Theref<fell dead on the keyboard>

Re:Where is

[aliquis]

... <resurrected - haha!>

What I really meant was:
* I don't trust science! I trust God and conspiracy theories on the Internet! The bolder and #ff0000 text and the more apocalyptic video the better!

They for sure are more trustworthy than the peer-reviewed content of scientific journals and work of researchers at universities! .. the Bible and the Quran tell us all we need to know!

Technicalities

[Translation Error]

The vaccine uses a common cold virus genetically engineered to carry a tiny piece of Ebola DNA. Sprayed up the nose, it saved all nine monkeys tested for infection.

Saved? I can believe that none of the vaccinated monkeys caught Ebola, but I'd hardly call that 'saving' them. I'd also think calling a vaccine 100% effective is a bit premature with only nine test subjects.

Re:Technicalities

[gstoddart]

For a sample size of 9, it's 100% effective.

As with all statistics, the devil is in the details. :-P

Re:Technicalities

[cdrudge]

If the infection rate prior to being immunized was 100%, I'd say 9 of 9 not being infected is pretty fricking huge for something that kills 1/2 the people that catch it and no other known immunization technique.

Re:Technicalities

[Kurast]

For a population size of 6 billion, confidence interval of 95%, expected mean distribution of 50% (most conservative) of infection ratio, a sample size of 9 gives us a margin of error of 32% (try yourself: http://www.raosoft.com/samples...)
Given 100% efficacy, it is highly significant, well outside the margin of error.
Is is significant even for 98% confidence.

Re:Technicalities

[ShanghaiBill]

As with all statistics, the devil is in the details. :-P

... and one of the most important details was left out: What is the infection rate in the absence of the vaccine? If it was 100%, and the vaccine prevented it, then it is 100% effective with 0% margin of error. If the infection rate would have been 50%, then it is still effective with (1-1/512) = 99.5% certainty. It is not clear if a control group was used in this study. TFA made it sound like there was not. So the positive result could have been because of some experimental error like dead ebola, that was non-infectious anyway.

Does anyone have a link to a better article, or the original announcement?

Re:Technicalities

[Nikademus]

That's true, it's know that you need 12 monkeys when a virus outbreak is there. :)

Re:Technicalities

[Wycliffe]

For a population size of 6 billion, confidence interval of 95%, expected mean distribution of 50% (most conservative) of infection ratio, a sample size of 9 gives us a margin of error of 32% (try yourself: http://www.raosoft.com/samples...)
Given 100% efficacy, it is highly significant, well outside the margin of error.
Is is significant even for 98% confidence.

It doesn't work that way. The population size was 9. You're only right if those 9 were pulled from random from the current
human population but that's not what happened. They were all exposed. It would take a rediculous amount of trials if all results
had to be divided by 6 billion (or whatever the current population happens to be). That's like saying a bug spray that killed all 10k
mosquitos might not work because there are 10 trillion mosquitos in the world so your sample size is too small. I agree that they
should now test a bigger but it doesn't make sense to divide their results by 6 billion.

Re:Technicalities

[mikes.song]

Wow, it's up to 200% effective!?!?!?!?!

That's the level of accuracy we are dealing with here folks.

Re:monkeys like us or monkeys like monkeys?

[gstoddart]

No no no ... monkeys like bananas, we like monkeys ... I'm sure some monkeys like us, and I'm pretty sure monkeys also like other monkeys or they'd have died out by now ... but we're talking, like, monkeys.

Monkeys, like, us. Monkeys, like us. Monkeys like us.

There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[Crashmarik]

without a needle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

Seems if needleless vaccination is your goal, this would be the way to go. Speaking as someone who got a flu shot from one of these it's a pretty painless experience.

Re:There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[sexconker]

without a needle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

Seems if needleless vaccination is your goal, this would be the way to go. Speaking as someone who got a flu shot from one of these it's a pretty painless experience.

Uh, those things aren't supposed to be used for vaccines. Read your own link. There's a risk of transmission from patient to patient.

Re:There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[Anonymous Coward]

Those jet injectors are not painless. I was shot with those evil devices many times during boot camp back in the early 70's. They'd line us up and march us between rows of orderlies who would pop us in both arms simultaneously. It sucked, I'll take needles, thank you.

Not to worry!

[Xyrus]

With the republicans in charge, you won't be the only scientific group that doesn't have any funding! You'll have lots of company.

Re:Not to worry!

[i kan reed]

You're citing the cuts the republicans forced by threatening legislative innaction that would recrash the economy as evidence that Obama is complicit in anti-science behaviors?

I mean, there's lots Obama has done, hasn't done, but the shit the republicans intentionally caused by threatening criminally irresponsible negligence as a condition of obeying their legislative agenda isn't "his".

Re:Not to worry!

[hey!]

I was an MIT student when Reagan was elected. A lot of us had work study jobs in research labs. The change in research wasn't so much a cut in funding a change in focus. "Deaths per dollar" became a familiar metric.

There was a guy who came to work in the same lab as me as an engineer. He'd been the PI of a project that developed an advanced electron microscope that was fifteen years ahead of its time. His project was discontinued because under the Reagan philosophy of science research the government shouldn't do applied research except into weapons -- thus the "deaths per dollar" metric. We used the microscope -- his life's work basically -- as a spare vacuum tank. In the mid 90s under Clinton funding was restored, and electron energy loss spectroscopy made rapid advances again.

Money

[fustakrakich]

God forbid that Wall Street cough up any of that free government money it got over the last 6 years.. No, no, we should never demand that. That would be communism!

Re:Money

[aardvarkjoe]

God forbid any of the African nations affected by this disease cough up any money.

Considering that the cost to the U.S. of this ebola outbreak is going to be in the billions of dollars, it makes a lot of sense to fund research into vaccines to reduce the cost to us later on, regardless of what other countries are doing.

Re:More proof the Republicans are in control

[roc97007]

No sane person would ever stop funding for something like this. That is proof this is the Republican's fault.

On the other hand, wouldn't Republicans fund it and then sell the vaccine at a huge profit? Why would they not do this? (Because they hate... black people?... no wait... um.. I got nuthin.)

Well,

[waspleg]

Obama wants 6.2 billion to combat Ebola I doubt he'll get it after last night, but if he does, maybe some of that will go to research?

Re:This is safe?

[Russ1642]

Science doesn't care what sounds scary to you.

What could possibly go wrong?

[thoriumbr]

A very mutable virus paired with a lethal one. Used in a spray. Ok, go ahead.

Re:More proof the Republicans are in control

[gewalker]

Yeah, it's all Dick Chaney's fault. Oh wait, it says in the article that Dick Cheney was largely responsible for the large funding increase for treatment of Ebola, etc.

Now the Bloomberg article clearly and accurately points out that Cheney did this to combat potential terrorism threats. But hey, no reason not to blame Republicans for being pro-death, anti-vaccine, etc. just because you have no idea about the actual funding details in this case.

Like most people, Dick Cheney has some things to like, some things to dislike. At least Cheney shot an attorney in the face.

Re:This is safe?

[reve_etrange]

I have no understanding of the dangers, or lack thereof, of viral payloads

Indeed. You see, biological information is partitioned into units called "genes," which are responsible for individual functions. A "viral payload" consists of the entire viral genome, usually containing at least several thousand genes. Here, just one (or perhaps a few) viral genes have been selected because they code for proteins which the immune system can use to identify infected cells.

There is no danger in making a weakened cold virus (you simply invented the connection to bacteria) which contains these ebola-infected-cell-identifying genes. None of the genes which make ebola dangerous are present. The modified cold virus trains the immune system to kill cells which look like they have ebola. If ebola itself shows up later on, the vaccinated immune system is already prepared to identify and kill infected cells.

Snark aside, this is huge.

[jpellino]

Simpler admin, less risk of infection. Wicked fast development.

Kickstarter

[Rick Richardson]

https://www.kickstarter.com/

ebola doesn't have DNA - it has RNA

[cslewis2007]

Just saying. If the source article gets that fundamental fact wrong, what can we take away from the rest of it. Were they really monkeys?

Re:ebola doesn't have DNA - it has RNA

[RDW]

The vaccine vector is an Adenovirus, a DNA virus. The recombinant Ebola virus gene it carries will be in the form of DNA, designed to encode the same protein as the original RNA gene in the Ebola virus. It's the protein that is important, since this what the immune system will raise its response against.

Re:Privatization

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on. That's easy. The free market would solve this problem by selling hazmat suits, hermetically-sealed penthouse apartments, and lots and lots of guns and canned goods. Just like any decent zombie movie, the people who can afford this stuff will survive, and the people who can't won't. Problem solved once the latter people die off and stop transmitting the disease. Then the people who can manage things for themselves rather than accepting government vaccine handouts can go back to business as usual, such as investing in the stock market.

No Ebola - but they have colds

[NotQuiteReal]

Now you have Ebola resistant monkeys, with Ebola DNA in them swinging around in trees and sneezing on you.

What could possibly go wrong with crossing Ebola with the common cold.

Sure hope the vaccine works, because you are going to NEED it soon.

Re:This is safe?

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

...trains the immune system to kill cells which look like they have ebola.

So, the solution to Ebola involves profiling? Geez. /s