To develop a coronavirus vaccine, synthetic biologists try to outdo nature | Hacker News Reader

To develop a coronavirus vaccine, synthetic biologists try to outdo nature

statnews.com

89 pointssethbannon43 comments

The new trick is that they are able to discover the structure of molecule they need through computer simulations modeling immune system/virus.

Basically it uses Recombinant DNA technology to mass produce this. It's already being used to produce growth hormone of various kids for use in humans, swines and bovines.

Difference here is that tho, in growth hormone we know the structure of peptide already as it can be extracted from the pituitary of the cadaver

What happens if the virus mutates during the development of the cure? Isn't that the real nature of viruses and the reason why we can't really cure the common cold/flu?

Coronaviruses have historically been quite stable (not an expert on this but I read this recently). More stable than the Influenza viruses at least. So we can only hope..

The virus can mutate and the vaccine will still work if the mutation doesn't cause a change to the epitope. (caveat other technical issues)

Annual vaccine!

Coming at it from a different and lay angle, could a cure be devised that would be even more contageous, spreading around fast and eliminating the virus?

hi I'm an idiot who knows nothing. can someone please explain the disconnect between this sentence:

> “It’s all of us against the bug,” said Neil King of the University of Washington, who has been part of the hunt for a coronavirus vaccine since 2017.

noting the "since 2017" part. and this:

> The World Health Organisation said this week it may be 18 months before a vaccine against the coronavirus is publicly available. https://www.sciencealert.com/who-says-a-coronavirus-vaccine-...

The former sentence seems to suggest there is as yet no path towards a vaccine for this particular virus in that researchers have been trying without success for three years, or is this having to do with the distinction between an immediate vaccine vs. one that is more generalized?

It’s the latter.

The coronavirus is also responsible for SARS and MERS. They had good luck with a vaccine for SARS but it wasn’t needed anymore so they stopped. MERS is highly lethal and was something they wanted a vaccine for if it popped back up. Ideally (this is where my knowledge stops) the vaccines they were working on for other strains will be a good launching pad to make a vaccine for COVID-19.

MERS outbreak keeps happening again and again.

AFAIK the closest they got to working vaccines for SARS and MERS cause lung damage from autoimmune response in each tested animal model.

The issue with these viruses is that they have a property known as Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE). Where normally neutralizing antibodies instead facilitate entry into your cells.

That was a big issue early on, but I think they were able to work past it before funding and interest dried up.

Didn't the SARS vaccine also cause the host to die when reinfected?

Early versions were causing even more extreme cytokine storms than the SARS virus did without the vaccine.

This shit is trial and error with some difficult to handle results when things are still in development. Which is why the idea that we'll have a safe and effective vaccine within the year is a complete pipe dream.

Vaccine development usually take years even in the best cases.

The Chinese are trying to speed things "China: Coronavirus Vaccine Could Be Ready for 'Emergency Use' in April" https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/...

Current processes for vaccine development take years.

If you're happy to have a significant chance of infecting the target with the thing you're trying to protect them from, you can make one in an afternoon with 18th century tech.

Considering that a major disease outbreak could kill millions, I think we should reconsider this approach. Thousands of people might die to perfect the vaccine making process, but thats better than millions dying from the disease.

Have you ever worked on a vaccine?

.. the photo in the article is worth a million dollars ...

a reporter once asked me to write a bunch of programming buzzwords on a whiteboard for part of a transmission, you sure this isn't the bioversion of that?

It seems so. It's fold.it. It's a bit more relevant than the movie equivalent of webpage sources on the screen, but a vaccine it isn't.

There are two photos in the article.

`dsign` refers to the one with President Trump, not the laptop displaying the protein.

Caption is "President Trump is shown a vaccine model during a tour of the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Md., on March 3. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES"

fair enough, but why would that be worth a million? Even using the phrase in a jocular fashion - it's not that interesting of a photo.

Being pedantic if I look at his photos on Getty Images and choose something about the same quality (I didn't find the exact image) and selecting for both web and print newspaper editorial front page I'm thinking about $4000

Is it actually a million on Getty Images? Or is it worth a million as in the common vernacular usage because it is amusing or has some worthwhile quality I cannot discern?

> amusing or has some worthwhile quality I cannot discern

The President's concerned/confused/concentrating look is definitely amusing, especially given his previous skepticism/criticism of vaccines.

But among the punchlines his presidency has given us, this photo is merely a chortle.

I feel the same, hence my confusion and deciding it can't be that photo that¨s worth the money. must be the other one.

Its a screen displaying a protein. One approach to the vaccine is by looking at it as a protein folding problem. They're trying to find a protein that can bind to the 'spike' of the corona-virus and prevent it from attaching to our cells.

To be pedantic, that would not be a vaccine, that would be an anti-viral drug. What they were doing here is expressing parts of the actual corona virus antigens on a "baseplate" that could contain many copies of it, in the hope that the human immune system would catch up on it if presented to the body and the resulting antibodies would possibly be effective against the coronavirus.

Regarding antiviral drugs for this, the corona-virus entry mechanism was elucidated and candidate inhibitors for this were located in previous articles during the last week ( https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30229-4 )

Yeah, I should have known better than to say that given that I work in the vaccine field, but not as a scientist. I guess I deserved that :P

On the laptop is a screenshot from fold.it ... of a sheet wrapped round a helix. Not sure what structure it is.

Isn't that thing on the screen just fold.it?

EDIT: pretty sure it is.

https://fold.it/portal/files/newcompetition.png

It's certainly very caption-able. From the expression on her face, I get the impression he's just asked if it's 1:1 scale, or something.

Cold showers help the human body fight germs. Why not? There is zero downside.

I'll change that: Cold showers prime and help the human immune system. There is no downside to doing it.

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