magic drugs against covid-19?

[weilke]

Remdesivir. Shortens the disease by 4 days. Fabulously expensive. For the ICU only.

I would expect it to work better if used earlier in the course of the disease. The government just printed 2.3Trillion dollars, 'expensive' is relative.

 

[chemgeek]

Speaking of "magic" drugs, human trials have begun on a vaccine that successfully protected six monkeys from heavy exposure to SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus).

https://www.businessinsider.my/monk...virus-free-strong-exposure-encouraging-2020-4

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-04-23-oxford-covid-19-vaccine-begins-human-trial-stage

Really promising, but tempered by the experience at the NIH of of seeing so many promising therapies fail after primate testing during subsequent human trials. But I remain cautiously optimistic that at least one of the many vaccines in development will be both safe and effective.

The leading candidates in terms of development and trials are the Oxford vaccine, which using a bio-engineered chimpanzee adenovirus to deliver the coronavirus spike protein gene into cells to generate immunity, and the SinoVac vaccine, which uses traditional technology to produced a chemically inactivated coronavirus.

The adenovirus technology was used to construct an Ebola vaccine, and employs a common cold virus for which one of the critical replication genes has been deleted--but the modified virus can still gain entry to cells to deliver its antigen gene payload. The inactivated virus technology has been around a long time, dating to the polio vaccine. It will likely be a good idea to have several vaccine technologies in trial and manufacture in case one of these approaches is not sufficiently safe or effective. One of the other technology competitors includes RNA or DNA vaccines. These have the advantage of being simpler to develop and manufacture, but may face more unknowns and regulatory hurdles as no RNA or DNA vaccine has yet been brought to market, although one was being developed for MERS before that outbreak was extinguished through isolation of infected individuals. But this is a good chance to see this technology shine, as it may be the "rapid response" technology for future pandemics if it works.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Really promising, but tempered by the experience at the NIH of of seeing so many promising therapies fail after primate testing during subsequent human trials. But I remain cautiously optimistic that at least one of the many vaccines in development will be both safe and effective.

The leading candidates in terms of development and trials are the Oxford vaccine, which using a bio-engineered chimpanzee adenovirus to deliver the coronavirus spike protein gene into cells to generate immunity, and the SinoVac vaccine, which uses traditional technology to produced a chemically inactivated coronavirus.

The adenovirus technology was used to construct an Ebola vaccine, and employs a common cold virus for which one of the critical replication genes has been deleted--but the modified virus can still gain entry to cells to deliver its antigen gene payload. The inactivated virus technology has been around a long time, dating to the polio vaccine. It will likely be a good idea to have several vaccine technologies in trial and manufacture in case one of these approaches is not sufficiently safe or effective. One of the other technology competitors includes RNA or DNA vaccines. These have the advantage of being simpler to develop and manufacture, but may face more unknowns and regulatory hurdles as no RNA or DNA vaccine has yet been brought to market, although one was being developed for MERS before that outbreak was extinguished through isolation of infected individuals. But this is a good chance to see this technology shine, as it may be the "rapid response" technology for future pandemics if it works.

One of those is Moderna, isn't it? With the mRNA? At least they are making the most "noise" about it right now.

 

[GeorgeC]

Yeah, the NIAID one.

 

[chemgeek]

One of those is Moderna, isn't it? With the mRNA? At least they are making the most "noise" about it right now.

Yes, but no mRNA vaccine has been brought to market yet, so it may face more complicated safety hurdles. But in theory, these are easier to develop rapidly.