Hacker News Reader

Comment by irjustin | Hacker News Reader

Very cool stuff. I'm still most bullish on the pill variant[0] for adoption, but more methods are always welcomed.

Anything to get our adoption rates up!

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/27/pfizer-at-home-covid-pill-co...

It sounds like that pill variant is an anti-viral treatment, not a vaccine, though. Still an excellent development, but it would complement vaccination rather than competing with it.

I think it's a necessary development as it might help anti-vaccine people.

Huh, surely only a little subset of that group would refuse injection and agree to take a pill?

You can probably only make them take it when you ground the pill up in their BBQ sauce or Kale juice or something similar...

Nope, the main reason for being anti-vaxx seriously is being (subconsciously) scared of needles. These people have no problem with taking pills lol.

At this point many of them believe that anyone with vaccine induced immunity is a spike protein factory which they believe causes infertility, the only solution being to socially distance from vaccined people forever and wear masks

(This is hilarious and so obviously a counterintel campaign, the FBI and others have a history[1] and mandate of infiltrating groups and steering them into compliance with more absurd information

[1] https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro)

No, but even though they don't want to get vaccinated while they are healthy, most of them have no issue taking a pill after they get sick.

Only a small portion of them are nutjobs and most are just unnecessarily cautious.

I have a friend that is really scared of needles, and an alternative mean of delivery would be really appreciated for her.

She managed to go over her fear for the COVID-19 vaccine, but it took her a lot of effort to get there.

Your [0] sounds great as a treatment if it works, and complementary to vaccines for prevention. The paper is about a vaccine slapped on your skin ("This delivers the vaccine directly to the dermal and upper dermal layers of the skin").

Along those lines, some other interesting companies in early stages are:

* Inovio - skin-based, but with a special device - https://www.inovio.com/our-focus-serving-patients/covid-19/

* Vaxart - oral pill - https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/vaxart-vaccin..., https://vaxart.com/tablet-vaccines/

* ImmunityBio - oral/sublingual/subcutaneous injection/combo - https://immunitybio.com/covid-19/, https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/01/12/215692... (some of their papers also compare against intramuscular versions of their drug, but they appear to want to avoid big needles and have some means of injecting just below the skin, but not as shallow as this HD-MAP approach it seems)

* Oravax Medical - oral - https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021032... / https://www.ora-vax.com

* Aeterna Zentaris - oral - https://www.zentaris.com/oral-coronavirus-vaccine, but this is still pre-clinical.

This site https://covid-19tracker.milkeninstitute.org/#vaccines_intro also mentions two other oral-based companies, but either they don't have any explicit info on progress or they haven't been mentioned since early 2020:

- Applied Biotechnology Institute - http://www.appliedbiotech.org/research-development/products-...

- Migal Galilee Research Institute - https://www.migal.org.il/en/coronavirus-vaccine-project, https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-made-oral-vaccine-for-... (since the main website still says in-vivo in 90 days, I'm guessing there was a halt in development.)

If the Milken Institute is up-to-date, Inovio should be furthest along (prepping phase 3), followed by ImmunityBio (phase 1/2). Anyone succeeding would be a wonderful addition for the world!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com