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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

> antibodies elicited by the mRNA vaccine were more focused to the RBD compared to antibodies elicited by an infection, which more often targeted other portions of the spike protein.

I wonder how this might impact the design of future mRNA vaccines. For example, could vaccines target multiple proteins that both are associated with the virus?

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I don’t see why not since they already do that, both Pfizer and Moderna already have targeted multiple regions on the spike protein, presumably they also modeled them to optimize for antibody interaction and stability by taking regions that are less likely to mutate without loss of function.

If you reach out the limit of what you can encode in a single mRNA payload you can add additional payloads to a single dose or spread them across multiple doses.

Engineered viral vectors also can do similar things and also have a base pair limit so the solution would be similar.

Looks like they are trying to do something exactly like that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28319391

this is referred to as a polyvalent vaccine, and it is a good thing to do once we understand enough about the antigens in question to incorporate both in one shot. There is nothing of course precluding two different vaccines of differenct valence, and we have been doing this for a short time now, when we combine single jab mRna vaccines, with adenoviral vectored vaccines, there is very slight sequence variation between adV and mRNA vaccines however by strictest interpretation this is a multivalant[bivalant] scenario.

it also generates immunity to the adenoviral vector proteins

yes and this has been the big setback for many years this is why we dont have a lot of these vector vaccines.

if someone is immune to adenovirus they typically destroy the vaccine before antigen can be presented. this reduces prophylactic opportunities regarding serial innoculation with adenovirus vector, regardless of the cassette load

i am one of those people, having worked with adenovirus, as well as coronavirus, thus i am obligated to non adenoviral vaccine, and made out quite well during my infection with SARS-1, and with SARS-2

you got infected with SARS1?

yes i did, when it was brand new, it was very concerning, i was very congested, labouring to breath and walking was starting to feel like running a marathon in 90 degree weather. when SARS-2 came around it was a case of the sniffles, with very high antibody titre, searching on a whim i discovered that i am not alone, and apparently SARS-1 convalesence related to outcome of SARS-2 infection

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