[HN Gopher] They spent 12 years solving a puzzle. It yielded the...
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They spent 12 years solving a puzzle. It yielded the first Covid-19
vaccines
Author : sytelus
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-01-09 07:39 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nationalgeographic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nationalgeographic.com)
| [deleted]
| wslh wrote:
| The should trace it back to "The Birth of Monoclonal Antibodies"
| [1] where Cesar Milstein [2] did not apply for a patent for his
| technique [3].
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ni.3608
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9sar_Milstein
|
| [3]
| https://www.whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/exhibitions/mi...
| williesleg wrote:
| They dragged their feet for 12 years.
| throw0101a wrote:
| We cannot be predict what will be needed for what:
|
| > _" S glycoprotein signal peptide (extended leader sequence),
| which guides translocation of the nascent polypeptide chain into
| the endoplasmic reticulum" - part of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine.
| I don't ever want to hear anyone question fundamental science
| again. 1/2_
|
| > _The level of control and understanding we now have over our
| biology came from literally millions of person-years spent
| working on things that at the time were obscure and "useless".
| And now? We can leverage all this into a 95% efficient vaccine
| _at the first try_. 2/2_
|
| * https://twitter.com/PowerDNS_Bert/status/1342159339767934978
| endgame wrote:
| > Jason McLellan was wandering around a ski shop of Utah's Park
| City Mountain Resort, waiting for his new snowboarding boots to
| be heat-molded to his size-nine feet, when his smartphone rang.
| It was Barney Graham, deputy director of the National Institute
| of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Vaccine Research Center.
|
| For god's sake get to the point already.
| publicola1990 wrote:
| Yes, truely this style of writing is so tedious. Informative
| articles should aim to present the matter in the style of an
| Encyclopedia chapter.
| acl777 wrote:
| It's NatGeo - they gotta appeal to their current audience...
| somehow :-)
| [deleted]
| subjectsigma wrote:
| Forget the writing, I didn't get past the title. I hate this
| modern trend of making the title into multiple clipped
| sentences. It makes even the most innocuous or mundane concepts
| sound like clickbait. So obnoxious.
| tigerBL00D wrote:
| Unlike this relatively new approach adenovirus-based vaccines
| have been researched and used for over 50 years (350 studies)
| [1]. An Ebola vaccine has been developed using this same tech.
|
| This is certainly important and impressive work, but the title is
| inaccurate stating these are the "the first" vaccines. These are
| definitely the most expensive ones and made for the first word
| countries with developed and reliable infrastructure able to meet
| storage requirements. So in some ways they are the first indeed.
|
| 1: https://sputnikvaccine.com/about-vaccine/human-adenoviral-
| va...
| notacoward wrote:
| Do you have a link to information about an adenovirus-based
| COVID vaccine developed and/or approved earlier, at any price
| point? Without such, the "first" claim is accurate and your
| disputation is counterfactual. Also, please disclose the nature
| of any personal stake in promoting one over the other.
| tigerBL00D wrote:
| If we are talking specifically about which vaccines were the
| first to get approved see here:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03441-8
|
| Prices here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.statista.com/ch
| art/amp/2365...
|
| I don't have any interest in promoting a specific vaccine.
| Just disdain for skewed reporting. FYI there are multiple
| adenovirus-based vaccines available (Oxford/AstraZeneca,
| Sputnik V).
| notacoward wrote:
| In other words, no, you don't have any links proving any
| such thing. Your own link shows that mRNA-based
| Pfizer/BioNTech was approved before adenovirus-based
| Oxford/AstraZeneca in the UK. Ditto in the US. When you
| claim that something true is not true, you are the one
| uttering untruth. Why would you then be surprised by
| downvotes?
| tigerBL00D wrote:
| I don't know what you are talking about. Quoting from the
| first link above:
|
| China and Russia have approved vaccines already, but
| without waiting for the immunizations to complete the
| final round of tests in people. Regulators in the United
| States and the European Union are expected to issue their
| decisions in the coming weeks.
| notacoward wrote:
| > without waiting
|
| Not exactly running the same race then, are they? It's a
| _very_ dubious definition of "first" and certainly not
| enough to say someone else's claim is false.
| tigerBL00D wrote:
| P.S. Not sure why the downvotes without any comments. Did I
| write something factually inaccurate? But then again it's not
| surprising because vaccine conversation in some parts of the
| world (e.g. the US) is shaped predominantly by business
| interests and politics, not facts.
| mprovost wrote:
| Approval is one thing involving a whole world of bureaucracy.
| But the Moderna vaccine was designed by January 13, 2020 and
| took just 2 days. 2 days plus decades of prior research... This
| was before the first identified case in the US and in fact
| before China or the WTO recognised that it could be transmitted
| between humans.
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vac...
| mellosouls wrote:
| FWIW: Recent discussion on the female mRNA innovator allegedly
| sidelined in her academic career. She isn't mentioned in the
| article either - I've no idea if she should be - but it seems a
| relevant recent topic.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25623616
|
| https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3
| Fnoord wrote:
| TIL. This woman grew up in Soviet Hungaria, and moved to USA.
| sampo wrote:
| There is 3 maybe equally important components in the new RNA
| vaccines: Protein: The final product.
| mRNA: the information carrier. Lipid bubbles: carrying
| mRNA into the cells
|
| This article is about the protein. The unmodified virus spike
| protein is stable only when attached to the protein shell of
| the virus. These people worked on methods, on how to modify the
| spike protein so that when it's released alone, without the
| rest of the virus, it still keeps the same shape and form as
| when attached to the virus. If you just used to original
| protein sequence without the rest of the virus, the spike
| protein would fold into different 3D-shape, and would not work
| as an antigen. Without this work, the vaccine would not work.
|
| Katalin Kariko invented how to "mask" this foreign mRNA, so
| human cells accept and use it for protein synthesis. Whereas
| usually human body attacks foreign RNA vigorously.
|
| The there is the part, where mRNA is packed inside tiny fat
| bubbles, so it can be transported into human tissue and cells.
| I think we still haven't seen a submission about this
| technology here?
| ibaikov wrote:
| Where can I read more about these technologies and biotech
| itself? What courses or other learning materials would you
| recommend?
|
| I'm an absolute beginner, started reading lots of Twitter
| threads when covid began.
| athriren wrote:
| this made me curious. it appears the significant advances in
| liposomes occurred in 1995. i believe doxil was the first
| drug delivered by a viable liposome product as earlier
| efforts could not hide the liposomes from the body's immune
| system.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01694.
| ..
| jonplackett wrote:
| We are so frikkin lucky that this research was already done!
| notsolucky wrote:
| Sure, you could choose to believe the wild conspiracy theory
| that a virus kindly waited for us to be ready to create a
| vaccine for it before it jumped to humans, out of all of human
| history.
|
| Or you can believe a vastly more probable explanation:
| correlation due to common cause. Humans have been paying
| particular attention in the past decade to this spike protein;
| some of this research led to a vaccine, while another branch of
| research led to a lab escape. The conspiracy theory of "luck"
| and kind viruses doesn't even pass the laugh test in
| comparison.
| rcthompson wrote:
| Just remember, that "luck" is partially the result of funding
| the basic and translational research that yielded this
| breakthrough even _before_ there was an immediate need for it.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Yeah it was excellent foresight. But we're lucky someone had
| that foresight!
| jonplackett wrote:
| In a way we're lucky SARS and MERS fired a warning shot
| since that's what seems to hack kickstarted all that
| research.
| oblio wrote:
| The laser of vaccines :-)
| beerandt wrote:
| We're lucky that Sars and Mers, which enabled much of this
| research, were not themselves epidemics of this level.
|
| We had an emergency project then luckily got a decade long
| deadline extension.
| glandium wrote:
| Talk about good timing... imagine sars-cov-2 hitting a few
| years earlier...
| cinntaile wrote:
| It wouldn't have mattered much in practice. Astrazeneca has
| also produced a vaccine and it's not an mRNA vaccine. Not
| trying to downplay the research here, I'm just talking
| timing.
| maxerickson wrote:
| _At about the same time, Pfizer and BioNTech spoke with
| Graham about using the 2P mutation in their vaccine.
| Because their work was patented and widely published, other
| drugmakers--including Novavax and Johnson & Johnson--also
| based their candidates on the design. Pfizer-BioNTech's
| vaccine would become the first authorized in the U.S. after
| it showed an impressive 95-percent efficacy rate. Moderna's
| vaccine was 94-percent effective._
|
| (at least) 4 of the vaccine candidates utilize the research
| from the article.
| glandium wrote:
| The technology used for the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine,
| AIUI, was years in the making, and wasn't ready either a
| few years ago. Again, good timing.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| corona cases have been traced back to at least Sept. 2019 in
| China.
|
| Since most people who follow corona think there's about a 50%
| it came from the Wuhan virus lab, it's a shame they weren't
| working on a vaccine in Wuhan.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I reckon 10 years earlier would have been the sweet spot of
| terrible - most of the world still on rubbish internet.
| Hardly any online shopping capacity from supermarkets. Zoom
| non-existent.
| anoncake wrote:
| The pandemic would likely be over by now because we did not
| have the means to prolong it.
| nixass wrote:
| Upside - not so many knuckle draggers having access to
| cheap phones, unlimited internet and limited intellect. All
| these "anti" movements and everyones-aunt-with-opinion
| would not exist, which would be better for everyone's
| mental health.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Is zoom really that much better than Skype circa 2010? I
| don't use it but there were video conferencing options open
| back.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Yes. Video conferencing now is seemless, it wasn't back
| in 2010.
| vezycash wrote:
| Or someone cutting their funding because their research area
| wasn't immediately useful.
| arez wrote:
| I don't get why nobody is talking about Ingmar Hoerr (Founder of
| curevac) who found out that you can use RNA as an envelope to
| send informarion to the immune system. Is every country just
| supporting "their" scientists or something?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Everyone working on these things is standing on the shoulders
| of giants. If your story has hero-creep it would be a book :)
|
| It's fine to write these focused articles to teach, it's like
| analyzing one facet of a diamond. The more the merrier!
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(page generated 2021-01-09 23:02 UTC)