Model Train Journal

Oxford vaccine: How did they make it so quickly?
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55041371

The critical piece of technology

The central piece of their plan was a revolutionary style of vaccine known as "plug and play". It has two highly desirable traits for facing the unknown - it is both fast and flexible.

Conventional vaccines - including the whole of the childhood immunisation programme - use a killed or weakened form of the original infection, or inject fragments of it into the body. But these are slow to develop.

Instead the Oxford researchers constructed ChAdOx1 - or Chimpanzee Adenovirus Oxford One.

Scientists took a common cold virus that infected chimpanzees and engineered it to become the building block of a vaccine against almost anything.

Before Covid, 330 people had been given ChAdOx1 based-vaccines for diseases ranging from flu to Zika virus, and prostate cancer to the tropical disease chikungunya.

The virus from chimps is genetically modified so it cannot cause an infection in people. It can then be modified again to contain the genetic blueprints for whatever you want to train the immune system to attack. This target is known is an antigen.

ChAdOx1 is in essence a sophisticated, microscopic postman. All the scientists have to do is change the package.

"We drop it in and off we go," said Prof Gilbert.

It can then be modified again to contain the genetic blueprints for whatever you want to train the immune system to attack.

Until recently that was almost impossible to do. You need the genetic map but you also need a molecular model of the virus. That requires sophisticated imaging and computer modeling that used to be almost impossible to do/get. The computer model also needs to be able to show how the virus unpacks to expose potential critical weaknesses.

There are researchers around the world working on building these models and then running simulations on potential molecules to "fit" in the "holes" and stop the virus in its tracks. In some ways it's like doing a jig saw puzzle by brute force.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55041371

It sounds strange to say it, almost perverse, but it was lucky that the pandemic was caused by a coronavirus.

This family of viruses had tried to jump from animals to people twice before in the past 20 years - Sars coronavirus in 2002 and Mers coronavirus in 2012.

It meant scientists knew the virus's biology, how it behaved and its Achilles heel - the "spike protein".

"We had a huge head start," Prof Andrew Pollard from the Oxford team said.

The spike protein is the key the virus uses to unlock the doorway into our body's cells. If a vaccine could train the immune system to attack the spike, then the team knew they were odds-on to succeed.

And they had already developed a ChAdOx1 vaccine for Mers, which could train the immune system to spot the spike. The Oxford team were not starting from scratch.

"If this had been a completely unknown virus, then we'd have been in a very different position," Prof Pollard added.

It was also lucky that coronaviruses cause short-term infections. It means the body is capable of beating the virus and a vaccine just needs to tap into that natural process.

If it had been a long-term or chronic infection that the body cannot beat - like HIV - then it's unlikely a vaccine could work.

I'll take my chances with the virus.

robert. wrote:I'll take my chances with the virus.

No, you owe it to your family to get the vaccine.

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:

robert. wrote:I'll take my chances with the virus.

No, you owe it to your family to get the vaccine.

I’ll comment on that later tonight.

HONDO74 wrote:Instead the Oxford researchers constructed ChAdOx1 - or Chimpanzee Adenovirus Oxford One.

Adenovirus platforms are hardly new and the molecular engineering is pretty well understood to the point of nearly being routine. Using such for vaccines for all sorts of ailments has been around for a long time. Sometimes it's been successful, sometimes it's just gotten anecdotal positive results, and sometimes it fails......sort of like all the other molecular engineered drugs. Looks great in animal models and then they disappear into the mist of clinical trials.....

The ability to do all that's been done so rapidly is more of a testament of the huge amount of knowledge and capabilities that have pre-existed that could be brought to bear on the problem and mobilized into action, along with the will to pivot and shift resources. What this may eventually promote is less science for science's sake and more directed programmatic research to address specifics problems as opposed to tossing funding darts into a dartboard handing in a closet in the dark in the basement. Applications research is not well tolerated by academics despite claims to the contrary....

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:

HONDO74 wrote:Instead the Oxford researchers constructed ChAdOx1 - or Chimpanzee Adenovirus Oxford One.

Adenovirus platforms are hardly new and the molecular engineering is pretty well understood to the point of nearly being routine.

I believe it said that in the article I posted the link to. That was the reason they came up with what they did so quickly.

What I found interesting was that the vaccine trains our own immune system to fight the virus ?? The vaccine doesn't do that?? In other words the vaccine doesn't act like an anti bacteria medicine. ??

I have no idea if that is fact or fiction. I shall leave that up to Rufus to say what he knows about it

HONDO74 wrote:

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:

HONDO74 wrote:Instead the Oxford researchers constructed ChAdOx1 - or Chimpanzee Adenovirus Oxford One.

Adenovirus platforms are hardly new and the molecular engineering is pretty well understood to the point of nearly being routine.

I believe it said that in the article I posted the link to. That was the reason they came up with what they did so quickly.

What I found interesting was that the vaccine trains our own immune system to fight the virus ?? The vaccine doesn't do that?? In other words the vaccine doesn't act like an anti bacteria medicine. ??

I have no idea if that is fact or fiction. I shall leave that up to Rufus to say what he knows about it

Antibacterials act directly against bacteria. Antibacterials generally do not act against viruses. That's why your doc won't give you an antibacterial to treat a viral infection. Bacteria and viruses are two different beasts. Got to get antiviral drugs to treat viruses. Different modes of action invovled to address the different natures of bacteria and viruses

Vaccines overall do "train" the immune system to fight the virus. Train is not quite the right word, but it'll have to do. Maybe more correct is program or provides the information to elicit a response that the immune system uses to generate and produce antibodies, B-cell and perhaps T-cell responses, and then remembers that in the cassette of responses that can be pulled up later as needed.

I don't trust it. Some say " we don't know the long term effects od the virus" How do me know the long term effects of the vaccine? Great Corona did not kill me but this Texas size tumor is sucking the life out of me.

There is a big difference in potential side effects from a vaccine and side effects from a long term treatment regimen. The later involves larger exposure/doses over a longer period of time. The drug regimens are an attempt to directly attack the virus. This can lead to issues where the drug affects things it's not supposed to and possibly trigger an auto immune response where the body starts attacking its own cells.

Vaccines work by stimulating/triggering an immune response. aka tricking the body to manufacture the defensive material to kill/starve off the virus. The usual less than ideal response to a vaccine is it doesn't work. Unfortunately this is fairly routine with the seasonal flu.

chuck wrote:There is a big difference in potential side effects from a vaccine and side effects from a long term treatment regimen.

Yes, but there's limited knowledge of long term chronic tox related to mod-mRNA. That information will not be available until well into next year. This emergency use application will no doubt have some serious strings attached to who gets these vaccines and who qualifies.

Yes, but there's limited knowledge of long term chronic tox related to mod-mRNA.

Very true. Are there any clues based on other treatments (non vaccine related) using mod-mRNA?

chuck wrote:

Yes, but there's limited knowledge of long term chronic tox related to mod-mRNA.

Very true. Are there any clues based on other treatments (non vaccine related) using mod-mRNA?

Not yet and certainly not on this scale; most of these genetically linked drugs that have been in trials have very specific smaller population diseases as their targets. Some are pretty rare with really low incidence numbers. I've got 2 folders of publications to review on a disease that I never heard of until this week; 4 patients in the trial.

Thanks. I tried googling it and the stuff was pretty opaque to someone not in the field. It made the DCS instructions look "EZ to read".

It looks like it's been around for about 5+ years? Also, the efficacy question seemed to be linked to delivery. Getting it where it needed to be and intact seemed to be a real issue.