Universal vaccines have avoided scientists for years. RFK, Jr., betting on this successful approach
The HHS and Trump NIH plan to invest $ 500 million in a dead white virus approach for universal vaccines, including such flu and covid vaccines. Here’s why that is a challenge
A worker who uses personal protective equipment (PPE) has a tray containing ulleyd vaccines.
Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg through Getty Images
Scientists have spent decades in hot persecution or a universal influenza vaccine, a single shot to protect people from past and possible future tensions of a mutant virus frequently. This would classify the need for annual flu vaccines to increase the immune system before seasonal cases increase.
According to reports, the Trump administration is preparing plans to invest $ 500 million in a universal vaccine research project, according to Wall Street Journal. The possible federal financing seems to be part of a Department of Health and Human Services of the United States and the initiative of the National Health Institutes, called Generation Gold Standard, to develop a universal vaccine platform based on a so-called beta-propiolactivated beta vaccine) Wholholholti-Dodactivated is killed and used in a vaccine.
In an advertisement published on Thursday, agencies said the initiative will focus on universal influenza and coronavirus vaccines for widely pandemic virus protection that cause pandemic, such as the H5N1 highly pathogenic flu virus and the coronavirus responsible for severe acute syndrome (SARS), mid -east respiratory syndrum Coronavirus and the coronavirus and the coronavirus. He WSJ He informs that Generation Gold Standard marks a change of the $ 5 billion project of the Biden Nextgen era, which supported the development of new Covid vaccines.
About support for scientific journalism
If you are enjoying this article, consider support our journalism awarded with Subscription. When buying a subscription, it is helping to guarantee the future of shocking stories about the discoveries and ideas that shape our world today.
“At first glance, this is very encouraging because trying to stimulate the scientific research that would improve the vaccines that are taken and influenza in the future would be of a huge benefit to the global community,” says William Schaffner, an infectious disease doctor and professor at the Medical Center of the University of Vanderbilt. But, he adds: “The devil is in the details.”
American scientist He spoke with Schaffner about how universal vaccines work and what challenges and considerations face researchers in the development of the subject.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
What is a universal vaccine?
We know that influenza and Covid viruses mutan, and that is why we have to update vaccines annually. That is very problematic; A lot of work is needed, much effort and a lot or revaccination for everyone. It would not be better if we had an influenza vaccine and a covid vaccine that would protect against all Or these strains, or most of those of the past but also possible new ones?
Scientists have their legs trying to develop such influenza and covid vaccines, seek to obtain parts of the virus that are the same, from tension to tension. There are external parts of the virus that mutate and change, and we make our current vaccines adapt to these external changes. But there are more internal structures that, as we say, are preserved. That is, they are the same regardless of the tension. If we could make the immune system respond to those stable parts of the virus, we would have a universal vaccine so that it doesn’t matter how much the virus has changed, we would still be protected.
What is the current state of the investigation?
This has a leg in the eyes of scientists for quite some time. We have had universal candidate vaccines that are tested by influenza, but we still have no viable for Covid. Therefore, investment, determination and money can accelerate scientific progress to reach those highly desirable objectives. This would not only benefit the population of the United States, but would have global benefits.
The new NIH and HHS initiative focuses on a virus platform around the world for universal vaccines. How would this work?
There are different ways to try to create a vaccine, and one of the oldest ways is to do it very simplely: you get the entire virus, and simply kill it, and then you use it or all its broken parts, depending on how you kill it, it leaves the vaccine. Often when you kill the virus, you hit it and break it. Therefore, he expects the immune system not only to respond to these external pieces, but also obtain greater access to those internal structures that are more stable and constant from the mutation to the mutation. That is a success in the past.
It is an interesting theory. It may or may not work. There may be more than one path that leads to Rome, as they say. We may have to try them all. Therefore, he does not want to strive at the beginning, because if that mechanism does not work, then he has to try others, and it is better to have different teams working in different approaches simultaneously. Then I say: let scientists get released. Remove your straps, support them, but let them choose a series of different possibilities
What other challenges or a universal vaccine should be consulted?
We have talked about creating the vaccine. The other part of the equation that always has to look at any vaccine is your safety. What are its side effects? One of the other challenges will be how to design clinical trials to determine how effective the vaccine is. Now we arrive at the difficult part, because, in the last 48 hours, I have seen news reports that say: “Well, there is a convenience to test all new vaccines against a saline solution, a placebo.”
There is no doubt that this is the most rigorous way to process. Here is the difficulty: if you already have such a vaccine, and you are already recruited for everyone, is it ethical to give people a placebo? The design of these studies must approve the ethical review joints, and it has been a standard practice of these review meetings to say that if you do not have a recruited vaccine, you cannot retain that and those potential benefits of people and give them a saline solution. You must devise another way to try to determine the effectiveness of your new vaccine, and that presents different children or challenges. You cannot do a controlled placebo test, but you may be able to make a comparative trial: the standard vaccine versus the new [universal] vaccine. That could be a way to avoid that.
As mentioned, clinical trials for universal influenza vaccines are already in process. What is the thought behind a universal coronavirus vaccine?
Coronavirus are a family of virus of which Covid is one [member]. There are four coronavirus that cause a lot of respiratory illness from a younger child in humans, and then there were two others that remarkably caused a lot of illness: the Sars virus and the Mers virus. A universal coronavirus vaccine would protect against Covid, Mers, Sars and many minor respiratory infections that humans obtain, which are also problematic and have an economic impact. These are viral diseases that make people stay at home. They can interrupt the school. So that would be an excellent benefit, go beyond Covid to all these other viruses in the coronavirus family, and could well protect against some new future coronavirus that would be another pandemic.
