Breakthrough in Synthetic Vaccine Technology Requires No Refrigeration

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/september/synthetic-vaccine.html

by ArtWomb • 7 years ago

240 94 7 years ago

bristol.ac.uk

mabbo• 7 years ago

This is a huge deal.

A big issue the anti-vaccine movement latched onto was "they contain mercury!". Technically true- a compound used as a preservative has some mercury molecules in it. Never mind that it wasn't elemental mercury and was perfectly safe to ingest, or that the quantity of mercury was less than is in most fish-based diets.

The end result was a lot of third world countries naively banning vaccines containing mercury- meaning that all these vaccines no longer had preservatives that let them survive longer outside of refrigeration. It's hard to bring "must stay refrigerated" anything into rural areas in less developed parts of the world (or at least, it's a lot more expensive to do it). End result: fewer people vaccinated, and more preventable deaths, higher costs per person saved.

This kind of breakthrough, if applicable more widely, could save millions (of both lives and dollars).

rpmisms10• 7 years ago

I used to work for Andy Wakefield, so I have a bit of a different perspective on this issue. The important things that aren't in this are MSG, Mercury, and possibly adjuvants like aluminum, because

Our vaccine candidate is easy to manufacture, extremely stable and elicits a powerful immune response.

Those are what most of the intelligent anti-vaxxers worry about, except for a few people who object to fetal tissue being used in development, which is not an issue here.

I'm sure some folks will get up in arms about this, but it'll be a huge step forwards in many people's minds, and hopefully will be used as a template in the future.

To clarify: I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but I do think the testing process isn't rigorous enough, and I have seen absolutely awful medically confirmed reactions firsthand, which gives me a slightly different perspective. Vaccines are good, but I want the reaction rate in non-immunocompromised people to be zero

hanniabu• 7 years ago

For those unaware of who Andrew Jeremy is, this is from Wikipedia:

Andrew Jeremy Wakefield is a discredited British ex-physician who became an anti-vaccine activist. As a gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, he published a 1998 paper in The Lancet claiming a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism.

lotsofpulp2• 7 years ago

intelligent anti-vaxxers

Oxymoron.

PerryCox• 7 years ago

intelligent anti-vaxxers

No that's an oxymoron if I have ever seen one.

DangerousPie• 7 years ago

I used to work for Andy Wakefield

Interesting, what was that like? Did he actually believe all the claims he was making?

slowmovintarget• 7 years ago

I don't know how you qualify an intelligent "anti-vaxxer". I've had colleagues, that were otherwise intelligent people, vehemently refuse to listen to the evidence. They let their fear of autism drive their decisions. In doing so, they opened their children, and the communities they live in, to measles, mumps, chicken pox, rubella... all of the things we'd nearly eliminated.

Unless the child has allergies to the vaccine, or a compromised immune system, it isn't reasonable to leave the child without vaccination. Intelligent people have more complex ways of rationalizing the decisions they make based on fear. It doesn't make the decision intelligent or wise.

Either way, better vaccines will be a boon to all. Hopefully, it will also ameliorate the fears of some "anti-vaxxers". My own fear is that because irrational decisions are already not based on evidence, these people will be unable to consider or accept new evidence, even when their specific rationalizations have been accounted for.

grawprog• 7 years ago

Meh

sschueller3• 7 years ago

The primary issue is that vaccines are becoming a very large percentage of pharmas profits as well as there being protections for the industry to prevent people for suing them if a vaccine turns out to be actually unsafe. As far as I know this also applies if there were issues in the manufacturing even if the vaccine itself is safe.

Vaccines are very important and most make sense but we are at what appears to be a tipping point where profits may go over the general well-being of the public.

We need proper oversight.

magashna3• 7 years ago

To all the others saying intelligent anti-vaxxer is an oxymoron, you can be brilliant in some fields and have doorknob level intelligence in others.

yyyk6• 7 years ago

I'm completely sure the anti-vaxxers will find a way to scaremonger against this too. Alas, that movement is the result of ideological and sociological forces that are not going away. The only possibility is to suppress them lawfully and even that won't finish them off.

dev_dull2• 7 years ago

The only possibility is to suppress them lawfully and even that won't finish them off.

Government censorship always works to suppress only bad ideas and is never used to preserve power /s

zer00eyz2• 7 years ago

You realize that you also might be taking up a portion based on sociological and ideological forces that are driven by corporate profits.

The primary question that I like to ask people who make statements like this is as follows: "What is your mental model of how vaccines get approved and pushed to market?"

Even money says that you have a model that looks like "drugs" where vaccines are biologics, and treated completely differently.

Then I like to ask "If you did get sick from a vaccine what could you do". In the US you can't sue, you end up in a special vaccine court. HN in general opposes things that have extra-judicial processes attached to them (secret warrant courts, binding arbitration). For me extra judicial has become a "smell" ala code smells that make me look deeper at an issue.

This is the same industry that gave us Martin Shkreli, Aids tainted medicine knowing sold in 3rd world countries, and $600 epipens. The suppression of science that is going to upset the apple cart is a thing. See John Yudkin and pure white and deadly, see suppression of tobacco research, see Barry Marshall and the fact that even after getting a Nobel prize some Dr doubt his results.

There are plenty of people out there that are mindlessly "pro vaxx" who have zero understanding. The debate has made me educate myself on the topic. Vaccines are an effective but flawed product, one that needs educated consumers and a hell of a lot of reform.

heavyset_go• 7 years ago

Anti-vaxxers start with their premise and then work backwards. "They contain mercury!" is just shit they flung at the wall that stuck. Eliminate the mercury from vaccines and they'll find a new excuse not to vaccinate their kids.

olouv3• 7 years ago

In fact Thimerosal was taken out of childhood vaccines in Europe in 1999 and in the United States in 2001. (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/index....), (https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/scientific-guideline/...).

ridgeguy2• 7 years ago

Never mind that it wasn't elemental mercury and was perfectly safe to ingest…

I’m sure you didn’t mean non-elemental forms of mercury are safe, but to forestall someone’s taking that meaning: “Organic” mercury compounds can be far more toxic than elemental mercury.

See dimethyl mercury [1]. A single drop exposure (through a latex glove) killed a scientist 10 months after exposure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylmercury

Agree with your post, the amount of thimerosal (Hg-based preservative) made it a non-issue in vaccine safety.

olouv3• 7 years ago

Agree with your post, the amount of thimerosal (Hg-based preservative) made it a non-issue in vaccine safety.

Any insights on why it has been banned from childhood vaccines since 2001? (see. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/index....)

jimbob452• 7 years ago

The real breakthrough would be to move away from needles. I imagine a great many anti-vaxxers would quietly give up their protest if that were to occur.

Someone1234• 7 years ago

On that note, there's a few vaccines heading to market in pill form. However many target diseases of the digestive system (like Norovirus[0]). But in general, I do agree that pill stable vaccines would massively subvert the anti-vaxx movement.

[0] https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/09/27/norovirus-vaccine-meets...

lazyasciiart3• 7 years ago

You can already get flu vaccines as a nasal spray, I haven't heard of any impact on anti-vax attitudes.

sam36• 7 years ago

Hi, anti-vaxxer here. It's never really been about "the mercury". Its about having a perfectly normal child that suddenly "regresses" after shots, be it through autism, sudden seizures, new allergies, or even death.

Don't take my word for it, the inserts themselves state most of the risks[0] from death all the way to shedding live bio-engineered virus onto the immunocompromised (so much for that argument). Plus part of the deal that the government had after removing vaccine manufactures for any liability for injury or deaths was to have a "database" of reported injuries for the public to analyze the safety for themselves[1]

So you see, we are not crazy, we are people that have children and we research what we believe is best for them. Following one's conscious is a one of the ideas allowed by our founding fathers. This image sums it up best: https://i.imgur.com/PdsJLLD.png

[0] https://vaccine.guide/

[1] https://tinyurl.com/y6ap37qo

TacticalTable• 7 years ago

This is anecdotal scaremongering. There is no correlation between vaccines and any of the side-effects you've claimed. This has been debunked repeatedly. Autism, seizures, and allergies are often associated with vaccines because they are not visible birth defects, but are instead discovered.

gus_massa2• 7 years ago

About the last image you linked: Even if you agree that the parents can make (wrong) decisions that put their kids at risks avoiding vaccines, it doesn't force you to make the same decisions. So what is your reason to not vaccinate your children?

(Moreover, if some people is not vaccinating their children, it makes me more alert not to skip/delay the vaccines of my children.)

(It's a problem for the children that can't get the vaccines for medical reasons.)

About the last link [1]: Note that there are 400 cases in 40 years, so it's like 10 case per year. Probably the trip to the hospital and back is more dangerous. Also, the first case looks like a sepsis that is almost surely not related to the vaccine. The last one in the page says that the diagnosis was "H. Influenza meningitis;" that is unrelated to the vaccine. Some other cases are not so clear or have previous illness. Some look like an allergic reaction that perhaps may be caused by the vaccine, but I only look at them for a few seconds and I'm not a medical doctor. Do you have a link to a list of cases that are filtered to exclude the cases that are obviously not caused by the vaccine?

driverdan• 7 years ago

Correlation is not causation. There is not a single shred of credible evidence to support causation.

SubiculumCode• 7 years ago

Vaccines do not cause autism. Regression events are likely due to genes being expressed (or failing to be expressed) at certain critical periods during development under which important neurodevelopmental processes are controlled e.g. synaptogenesis. This is a case of correlation does not equal causation.

olouv3• 7 years ago

I think it goes beyond mercury but more generally about the always evolving state of brain research:

- on one side you have old, relatively low-quality studies proving vaccines to be safe.

- on the other side, recent studies forcing us to re-think what we thought we knew. For instance, aluminium was previously thought to be eliminated via urine but has been proven to be able to migrate to the brain via the immune system where it can create chronic inflammation.

I think that we will quietly move away from aluminium-based vaccine for safety reasons. So this is terrific news if it offers another path for vaccination.

Vaccines are obviously "statistically" safe, but our knowledge on the matter is still evolving. And it's best to keep an open, scientific mind on the subject.

Some recent research papers on aluminium and the brain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/search/advanced?qs=aluminium%2...

A blog post from a parent that really helped me understand the POV of some "smart" anti-vaxxers: https://jbhandleyblog.com/home/2018/4/1/international2018

lymeeducator• 7 years ago

I agree. Everyone is unique due to their genetic expression from a lifetime of immune function and response. There is limited data and close to zero statistical confidence for the human population about what constitutes effective antibody levels for immunity because antibody levels are almost never measured in vaccine recipients. For example, the chicken pox vaccine trial groups were in the low thousands of people (search and read). The levels of vaccine sub-proteins and adjuvants are almost never measured in recipients. So while disease levels have decreased, likely due to vaccines and other environmental issues, there is almost no measurable data for antibody titer levels or accumulation and immune responses to the vaccine or any other ingredients or injection sites.

The HLA gene SNPs can help indicate reaction to vaccine subproteins and the immune response, or the accumulation of adjuvants like Aluminum, Mercury, etc in some people (scientific studies are starting to emerge on this). I know of three different vaccine+recipients (flu, polio, rabies) who suffered from or are still suffering from Guillane-Barre syndrome which started within days of injections. My son now has tendon flexor issues and had transient synovitis in the leg/hip near his chicken pox vaccine injection. The doctors dismiss any connection to the vaccine with zero data to back up their claim when in fact it by far the largest factor (detailed analysis of my son's leg, material accumulation, and genetic testing could shed more light).

codeddesign3• 7 years ago

First of all, if you are going to make a serious comment, don’t stereotype. That’s like saying “all Democrats hate babies” which is obviously a ridiculous statement. There is a plethora of reasons why people are anti-vaccine. For me, I think that the preservatives are incredibly dangerous. If I could buy vaccines without preserves I would gladly pay more and happily give them to my children. The fact that I have to inject my child with additional chemicals not required for the vaccine has me in the anti-vax boat.

redisman2• 7 years ago

Do you have some research to back up the dangers?

chmod775• 7 years ago

I think that the preservatives are incredibly dangerous.

Which is a statement that is in no way supported by any data we have on the use of vaccines. Facts don't care about what you think.

Your children are many many times more likely to get seriously injured by the diseases prevented by a vaccine, than possible side effects said vaccine.

I don't know how you can go "my gut feeling is better than your statistics" while putting children in measurable danger, then expecting people to be understanding of your position.

redisman2• 7 years ago

I hope so but I'm reminded of the saying: you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

lazyasciiart3• 7 years ago

You don't have to reason with the anti-vaxxers, just prevent them from convincing governments of their new justification for banning things. The new vaccines will be legal by default because they don't contain the banned ingredient.

frimsah• 7 years ago

you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

This is a cute phrase, but too cute to be true.

fnord77• 7 years ago

would this work for biologic drugs like remicade, humira and the like that require refrigeration?

EForEndeavour• 7 years ago

My guess is no, based on this quote from the article:

"We were working with a protein that forms a multimeric particle resembling a virus but is completely safe, because it has no genetic material inside," said Pascal Fender, expert virologist at CNRS. "Completely by chance, we discovered that this particle was incredibly stable even after months, without refrigeration."

It looks like the protein was chosen for its virus-like structure and/or its potential to be remodeled to mimic this specific virus (Chikungunya), and it only happened to be thermostable.

Breakthrough in Synthetic Vaccine Technology Requires No Refrigeration

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