Some scientists are taking a DIY coronavirus vaccine | Hacker News Reader

Some scientists are taking a DIY coronavirus vaccine

technologyreview.com

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Regardless of your judgement about self-experimentation, and regardless of the fact that a whitepaper is explicitly not a peer-reviewed journal article, the whitepaper [1] is a very interesting and carefully considered document.

They argue throughout that multi-dose nasal vaccines are a severely underlooked avenue for localized immunization.

A main criticism is that an untested vaccine might unintentionally enhance the actual disease. They argue that antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) specifically is less likely because the immune response of the intranasal vaccine is limited to the mucosal tissue [2].

[1] https://radvac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/White-Paper-SA...

[2] See [1] page 6

> in what appears to be the first “citizen science” vaccine initiative

This isn't true. Josiah Zayner and a few others have been teaching how to make and self-administer a DNA vaccine. Justin Atkin and a group of others used the same sort of vaccine on themselves as well.

There are definitely other groups that have given themselves vaccines of their own creation.

This is just the first one with George Church publicity, I would guess.

Zayner: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-25/one-bioha...

Justin Atkin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjDH6bXF4ow&t=67m47s

Honestly, I would be too scared to do this probably. But it made me curious and apparently wikipedia keeps a list of notable examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-experimentation_in_medici...

Link to the white paper itself referenced in the article (48 pages): https://radvac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/White-Paper-SA...

There's another risk besides the obvious antibody-dependent enhancement problem: this vaccine could change your response to an official COVID-19 vaccine that you might want to get later. You might be left with enough immune response to squash another vaccine that's trying to help you, but not enough to stop the actual disease. The fact that they're going for mucosal immunity, making their vaccine different from the leading official candidates, makes this bad interaction less likely. Still, I think it's important to mention.

The antibody-dependent enhancement problem is mentioned in the article, but I think it needs a longer explanation. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement

> Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), sometimes less precisely called immune enhancement or disease enhancement, is a phenomenon in which binding of a virus to suboptimal antibodies enhances its entry into host cells, and sometimes also its replication.[1] This phenomenon—which leads to both increased infectivity and virulence—has been observed with mosquito-borne flaviviruses such as Dengue virus, Yellow fever virus and Zika virus,[2][3] with HIV, and with coronaviruses.[4]

where [4] is https://www.ft.com/content/f1b25b41-f3cf-4a73-ba8f-582385bc2... that says about SARS (2003):

> Some animals that were given experimental Sars vaccines suffered more severe lung inflammation than unvaccinated animals when subsequently infected. Those trials stopped and there is still no effective Sars vaccine.

From confiks answer: They argue that antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) specifically is less likely because the immune response of the intranasal vaccine is limited to the mucosal tissue [2].

[1] https://radvac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/White-Paper-SA....

[2] See [1] page 6

the first vaccines in the world were self tested by the scientists who invented them. I don't see anything strange that it's happening now.

There will always be scientists who try things on themselves. to block that is to block scientific progress.

Correct.

I made a pithy comment here expressing the same point and it was downvoted. Hoping yours won't end up the same way

It's like the people who claim Galileo can't be right. According to all the research and math, Galileo is dead wrong and these ideas have to be regulated because it's just too dangerous! Physics doesn't work like that!

Medicine doesn't work that way too! It's too dangerous!

/sarcasm.

The most interesting parts of this to me are the uncommon but generalizable techniques being used

  1) the vaccine is delivered nasally
  2) chitosan is used as the adjuvant

The two seem linked since chitosan seems to be developed in particular to be safer in the context of a nasal vaccine.

One understandable concern of vaccine opponents is the injection of mercury as a preservative. This has now been eliminated from most vaccines, but vaccines also usually use alum (aluminum), which is also concerning. [1] Chitosan might be a much safer alternative.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4344667/

I believe mercury (as thimerosal) is used as a preservative, not an adjuvant. An adjuvant is something added to stimulate the immune response.

thanks, you are right, I edited my post

Chitosan is not used as a preservative and isn't an alternative to aluminum.

> So far, the group can’t say if their vaccine works or not. They haven’t published results showing that the vaccine leads to antibodies against the virus, which is a basic requirement for being taken seriously in the vaccine race. Church says some of those studies are now underway in his Harvard laboratory, and Estep is hoping mainstream immunologists will assist the group. “It’s a little bit complicated, and we are not ready to report it,” Estep says of the immune responses seen so far.

Suspicious. A group this hell-bent on deployment should have serological data by now. The lack of anything suggests either: (1) a complication; or (2) no efficacy.

The article mentions that because this is an inhaled vaccine, antibodies would be found mostly in the airways and lungs rather than the blood. Measuring them requires a biopsy, which these volunteers might not want to sign up for.

They signed up to take a possibly dangerous vaccine but are afraid to have a routine biopsy?

Lung biopsy is hardly routine (according to my definition of routine). You can collapse the lung, embolisms can occur, infections can be life-threatening, it's incredibly uncomfortable.

Jonas Salk tried his polio vaccine on himself and his children. This is very much in the same vein.

Actually it goes up your nose.

Polio is so scary. The stories I've heard about kids living in iron lungs. It really puts things into perspective. I've heard that people lined up for the vaccine like black Friday sales or when the iPhone 4 came out.

Does anyone know of good peptide suppliers?

Sigma

what could possibly go wrong with that

Literally every pandemic story/tv/movie has this scene.

If a real-life mutant super villain is ever going to happen, 2020 will be the year.

Already happened... Mutant orange

If your parents were offered the chance to take an early version of a vaccine that hadn’t been tested as much as usual, what would you recommend they do?

Can you say something is a vaccine before it's verified to work? A better title might be 'Around 20 scientists of various quality are using themselves as COVID-19 vaccination guinea pigs'

A 'vaccine candidate' would be a much better description.

. . . ." To administer its vaccine, the Radvac group settled on mixing the peptides with chitosan, a substance from shrimp shells, which coats the peptides in a nanoparticle able to pass the mucous membrane "

The author is in error, chitin is derived from crustacean shells, but chitosan is an artificial compound created by treating chitin with highly alkaline chemistry. I have samples of pharma chitosan and I can tell you when mixed into aqueous solutions at low conc. and administered onto human mucous membranes it burns like fire . . .

Isn't anything made by humans "DIY" at some level? Couldn't the same be said about all vaccines?

It sounds like he doesn't take his vaccine very seriously:

>says Church, who says he has not stepped outside of his house in five months

Also not stepping outside of your house in 5 months is absurd, and borderline insane. As a respiratory disease I feel like he would have a better handle on its transmission, its from people and primarily close contact with the infected, the virus doesn't float in like a piece of pollen from miles away and infect you.

Sure. That's why many people have no idea how they get infected eg. in New York... the moment you step in to an elevator you are exposed.

Well-developed vaccines, like every FDA-approved vaccine in the US, are good and save lives.

Just trying something some dude (however well-credentialed and intelligent) whips up in his lab strikes me as patently absurd. What, you think it’s more likely that this dude just happens to hit on the cure first try than you’ll have an adverse immune response? There’s a reason we test things.

Not to mention - MIT Tech Review publishing this as if it’s legit science is irresponsible. You know why they posted a white paper and not a journal article? Because it’s unpublishable.

We have medical testing processes to avoid accidents, medical misinformation, and snake oil. At a time when all 3 are on the rise, failing to point out the obvious dangers of individual medical experimentation only undermines the actual scientific method. We’re not going to biohack our way to a vaccine.

MIT Tech Review Gabe up any real legitimacy years ago. It’s really just a pro-MIT propaganda publication at this point, especially any of the frequent gushing articles about MIT alumni startups.

We can biohack our way to a vaccine candidate or multiple vaccine candidates. Biohackers have a lot less restrictions so they can work faster and take more risks, if they hit upon something good it just needs larger scale testing and it can be deployed. These will be great starting points of the vaccines currently in human trials fail. I'm sure some bigger BioTech company would happily buy up the IP.

> they can work faster and take more risks

Let's suppose they are lucky and nobody dies because the prototype of vaccine caused some problem or for an unrelated cause that is wrongly attributed to the prototype of vaccine.

How much time is it necessary to make all the trials to prove that the effective and safe? How much time do they save using humans instead of mice for the preliminary tests?

>Just trying something some dude (however well-credentialed and intelligent) whips up in his lab strikes me as patently absurd.

All early vaccines were developed by "some dude in his lab", just look up the history yourself. Not sure why your initial reaction to people trying to innovate is anger.

This made me think cyberpunk. I read that in the future some people will embrace technology such as implants and devices we embed in our bodies as well as some humans will be genetically modified in the future to give benefits we are not naturally born with. These are exactly the type of people that push these boundaries.

It’s hard for me to understand the value proposition of self experimentation.

Probabilistically, It sounds like best case you’re looking at a small level of immunity. Worst case, you’re looking at enhancement.

Doing this to yourself proves little more than you are willing to take a moderate risk. The behavioral changes noted at the end about a change in perception seem particularly dangerous. Assuming you might have immunity makes you behave somewhat riskier. And, if the experiment causes enhancement, combined with your lowered inhibition sounds like a death sentence.

I’m all for moving fast in many things, but I just don’t see how direct human experimentation provides any scientific benefit at this point. Besides, medical sciences that move fast Have the highest likelihood of additional harm/death.

"Best case" is that you then follow with a challenge trial and demonstrate actual immunity much faster than a conventional vaccine, leading to months shaved off the time needed to immunize the general population. That clearly has value, particularly given that people are still dying at a high rate in the US and much of the developing world.

Now... does that mean this is going to work? No idea. But these folks aren't dummies either. I think it has a shot and is worth trying as long as everyone involved (e.g. these are all university scientists) has a clear and solid understanding of the risks.

Aren't there phase 3 trials already? Meaning that we are in fact already giving people experimental vaccines. Maybe if you had done it months ago it would have sped things up.

Phase 3 requires monitoring how many people get sick from the environment. That takes a LOT of test subjects and a decent amount of time -- even in major hot spots covid isn't THAT prevalent. The overwhelming majority of people at any moment, after all, aren't getting sick.

If you have well-informed volunteers like this willing to break with conventional rules, you can do a challenge trial where you deliberately expose them to live virus. That can work very fast indeed.

Or just give major league baseball players the experimental vaccines. We'd be done with phase three in a few weeks if every MLB player who agreed to play volunteered for one of the vaccines currently entering/in phase three.

I don't get it. Isn't "every MLB player who agreed to play" too small a sample size to be useful?

Short answer: No.

This question comes up a lot. Someone should really write a blog post about how big sample size you need, and the dangers of using a biased sample (fit men), and spam it to death here.

I think the "fit men" can be an issue when you are testing whether a drug works to reduce severity (treat) an infection. However, the question of whether the vaccine actually prevents infection should be relevant regardless of the level of fitness. You should probably only vaccinate half of them and when inevitably an unvaccinated person gets it, you should have very good data about protection two weeks later. This is all just a thought experiment of course (unless there are volunteers . . .)

Ah, challenge trials. That makes sense.

> I just don’t see how direct human experimentation provides any scientific benefit at this point.

While historically self-experimentation has led to great scientific leaps, here (from what I understand) the goal was not so much to drive the science forward, but to protect the self-experimenter from infection and harm.

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