COVID-19: Vaccine/antidote and testing procedures Megathread [Mod Warning - Post #1]

Gael23 wrote: »

Less successful being the early vaccines we will see next year?

They done need to be very successful to pass their trials. To be honest I doubt they will be very successful but there could be quiet a lot of value to them.

We will have to see based on the results.

One more candidate in the nanoparticle/VLP category:

https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/ultrapotent-covid-19-vaccine-candidate-designed-computer

The paper with pre-clinical results is out in Cell now, the numbers are looking excellent and the challenged mice were completelly protected (sterilizing protection). A South Korean company and Amgen are getting involved with this as well. Their licensing is similar to that of Oxford, so multiple companies can take the tech and manufacture it.

Overall their results are very much in line with Novavax's candidate (phase 3 trials in UK). Novavax uses a similar construct but with the whole S protein. The big difference is that the WA candidate is using only the RBD part of the virus. No other team has managed to get an RBD only candidate to work better than the S-2P construct (BioNTech/Pfizer came close though).
It might even work well with a single dose, especially in the younger age groups.

Hardyn wrote: »

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-j-j-idUSKBN27F2HZ?taid=5f9c511f1dea630001ee6930

Johnson & Johnson moving to include 12-18 age group in their trials.

This is a very good sign

Have there been any recent developments on the treatment side?

What are the implications on the second or third generation vaccines when it comes to testing if large amounts of the population are already vaccinated with the first gen vaccines over the next 3-4 months.

Will that possibly stall or slow down testing if the prevalence of the disease reduces in the population or many of the population who may have been part in a trial already are vaccinated? Or create difficulty in assessing if the benefit is derived from the 1st gen vaccine or the later vaccines?

NH2013 wrote: »

What are the implications on the second or third generation vaccines when it comes to testing if large amounts of the population are already vaccinated with the first gen vaccines over the next 3-4 months.

Will that possibly stall or slow down testing if the prevalence of the disease reduces in the population or many of the population who may have been part in a trial already are vaccinated? Or create difficulty in assessing if the benefit is derived from the 1st gen vaccine or the later vaccines?

If at that point a correlate of protection has been established and a common assay standard has been agreed for serum testing, then efficacy can be inferred from sampling phase 2/3 participants. Safety data still gets collected the same way. That's how the latest ebola vaccine got approved.

Otherwise it's the same phase 3 as now but the placebo is an approved vaccine. The readout becomes complicated though.

hmmm wrote: »

Interesting enough article about the 2nd generation of Covid vaccines.
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-vaccine-next/next-crop-of-covid-19-vaccine-developers-take-more-traditional-route-idUSKBN27E0JM

Thanks for that, interesting indeed. I've read a bit about them before. However what I cant figure out is why are commonly used "technologies" in the 2nd tier?
We've had many of vaccines mentioned in article above for a long time. One would imagine adopting those methods would be quicker ( and safer?) than using a large untested one eg mRNA?

scooby77 wrote: »

Thanks for that, interesting indeed. I've read a bit about them before. However what I cant figure out is why are commonly used "technologies" in the 2nd tier?
We've had many of vaccines mentioned in article above for a long time. One would imagine adopting those methods would be quicker ( and safer?) than using a large untested one eg mRNA?

Not really, inactivated virus vaccines have been the ones causing the most trouble in the past (RSV, H1N1), so western companies are unwilling to go near those. The inactivation process can lead to some hard to predict effects on the viral proteins. They're quick to make but not in overly large volumes.

Live attenuated (not mentioned in the article) take some time to attenuate and to prove out that they're actually attenuated for good and won't revert back to the pathogenic form (see polio version of this type). Difficult to make in large volumes.

Protein subunit/VLP vaccines are addressing a lot of issues from the above 2 and are relatively quick to make. The currently licensed vaccines in this group have proven to be exceptionally safe and effective. Novavax is in phase 3 in the UK now with their construct (they'd be more affected by the lockdown there than Oxford I think). The time to clinic with these is still a bit longer than mRNA or viral vectors.

Why the mRNA and viral vectors are in front now? They have a massive speed advantage for getting into clinical trials. Once you have a viral vector platform that has been proven safe, you just need the important viral genome parts to insert and off you go. With mRNA it's even simpler, the whole construct is down to the most minimalistic approach that's biologically possible. The moment the viral genome has been sequenced a vaccine can be created with mRNA. No cell cutures needed either and it can induce a full blown cellular response (same as viral vectors). If these vaccines work out then a lot of lives will be saved due to this speed advantage.

Gael23 wrote: »

I have a medical condition which means I can’t take live vaccines so that’s going to be a big problem

Only the ones that can replicate. All current ones will be safe for you.

Apogee wrote: »

Interesting to see whether this approach ultimately succeeds or not:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-covid-sweeps-europe-one-country-tries-a-new-tactic-test-the-entire-population-11603462995

Guardian wrote:

Nearly half of Slovakia’s entire population took Covid-19 swabs on Saturday, the first day of a two-day nationwide testing drive the government hopes will help reverse a surge in infections without a hard lockdown. The scheme, a first for a country of Slovakia’s size, is being watched by other nations looking for ways to slow the virus spread and avoid overwhelming their health systems. The defence minister, Jaroslav Naď said on Sunday 2.58 million Slovaks had taken a test on Saturday, and 25,850 or 1% tested positive and had to go into quarantine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/01/half-slovakia-population-covid-tested-covid-one-day

The calm before the storm. Not a huge amount of news in the last few days. We'll get the mother of all news soon