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--- vincent_racaniello [2023/01/25 19:19]
pamela
+++ vincent_racaniello [2023/01/25 19:46] (current)
pamela [New York Times OpEd Pimping COVID mRNA Transfection]
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 Outbreaks from zoonotic sources represent a threat to both human disease as well as the global economy. Despite a wealth of metagenomics studies, methods to leverage these datasets to identify future threats are underdeveloped. ((https://web.archive.org/web/20230125174747/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4801244/?report=reader#__ffn_sectitle))
-==== Pimping COVID mRNA Transfection ====
+==== New York Times OpEd Pimping COVID mRNA Transfection ====
 Guest Essay - Worry About Human Behavior, Not Covid Variants
 New York Times - June 27, 2021
+{{ ::vincent_rancaniello_nyt_oped_get_jabbed.png?600|}}
 By Amy B. Rosenfeld and Vincent R. Racaniello
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 The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com. ((https://web.archive.org/web/20210627152048/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/opinion/covid-vaccine-variants.html))
+==== Citing Pfizer Immunity Claims - Do mRNA Jabs Make T-Cell Immunity ====
+{{ ::vincent_rancaniello_t_cell_immunity_w_jabs.png?600|}}
+“The narrative is screwed up in a way,” says Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. For one, he says, there is only one known strain of the novel coronavirus -- the original one, SARS-CoV-2, first discovered in Wuhan. And, two, there's no evidence so far of a variant that can meaningfully evade vaccines, though there are several variants out there.
+“People don’t really know what they are talking about,” says the researcher. “I understand, because you talk to doctors and scientists and you figure they would know what they are talking about, but they don’t always.”
+Racaniello believes people have been too narrowly focused on how antibodies respond against the coronavirus’ spike protein – and how some variants have appeared to limit the effectiveness of these antibodies in blocking infection. But that’s not the whole story, he says.
+Who is Racaniello to say? He wrote the book on viruses. Literally.
+A coauthor of the text, “Principles of Virology,” Racaniello has been researching viruses like polio since the 1970s, and started his own lab in the early 1980s. Becoming intrigued with virology after reading the old book, “Fever! The Hunt for a New Killer Virus,” Racaniello began studying at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and then at MIT alongside greats like David Baltimore, who had just won the Nobel Prize for his role in discovering an enzyme called reverse transcriptase.
+TheStreet: Now, fast forward to today, and we have three vaccines that look highly effective. But, we have fears that a new strain could emerge that could evade them…
+Racaniello: I am not worried at all that this virus is going to out-evolve vaccines. People have been looking at it the wrong way. People have been looking at antibodies. People say, “ah, the variants are less susceptible to antibodies. But, you know what? They are ignoring T cells. It turns out, none of the variants have changes that would impact the ability of the [[:T-cells]] to kill an infected cell.
+The [[:Johnson & Johnson]]  (JNJ) - Get Report vaccine turns out to be 100% effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths in South Africa…. I just saw an article today that showed that the U.K. variant ... made no difference in the outbreak in the U.K. It made no difference. The people who know, they are not worrying that the vaccines are going to be compromised by a variant. That’s what I can say with certainty.
+TheStreet: And for there to be an actual new strain, as opposed to just these variants, it would have to be significantly different, right?
+Racaniello: That’s right. It would have to have some substantial biological difference. Just think, there is still just one strain of H.I.V, despite infecting tens of millions of people for 40 years. So this has been a really bad dialogue.
+Racaniello: The way vaccines work is that when you get infected after you’re vaccinated you have a memory response and it takes two or three days to kick in. In those two or three days, you are going to be infected, but the infection will be kept down, you won’t get sick and you probably won’t transmit it.
+A study was publish that says that the [[:Pfizer]]  (PFE) - Get Report vaccine prevents infection in (most) people. I think that’s a red herring, because it’s too soon after the vaccine, when you have really high antibody levels. Try that study again in a year, and I’m sure people will be infected, although they will be protected against disease, and that’s what we care about.
+TheStreet: What do you think of some of this technology coming down the line, and let’s start with progress on these micro-needle patches to replace needle shots...
+Racaniello: We have to get away from needles. They are expensive. People have to be trained in how to use them. And, people are scared. I think a lot of [[:anti-vaccine]] sentiment comes from the fact that parents are scared to put a needle in their kid. So, I think getting away from needles would have a lot of benefits, and micro-needle patches look really good. … I would say at some point we’re not going to need needles anymore (for vaccines). Skin is a really good place to put vaccines.
+TheStreet: What about thermo-stabilization for vaccines so they don’t have to be kept in freezers?
+Racaniello: The idea that you have to keep vaccines frozen is not good, because not everyone can do that. So, **stabilizing vaccines with sugar, or sugar-like compounds**, is going to make a big difference. These mRNA vaccines have to be kept at such a low temperature and maybe this could help us get around that.
+TheStreet: And what about the future use of messenger RNA technology?
+Racaniello: I think the mRNA technology is amazing. We’ve been working on it for years, but decided to try it and it works. The possibilities now – you could imagine making flu vaccines with mRNA, all kinds of other vaccines, and even therapeutics. If you wanted to deliver a protein therapeutically for a short period of time to a patient, maybe this is the way to go. I’m very bullish on mRNA vaccines.
+TheStreet: Then there are the broad-spectrum antivirals. Do they hold promise – and, do we need to be careful, as we saw what happened to antibiotics for bacterial infections and the risks there?
+Racaniello: We already have antivirals that will inhibit a lot of RNA viruses and others that inhibit a lot of DNA viruses. So, it would be no problem to make an antiviral that would inhibit all coronaviruses, for example. If we would have already had that at the beginning of all this, we **could have stopped it altogether in China.** But the problem with these broad-spectrum antivirals is … they have to get better before they can be licensed.
+But then what happens? You’re going to always have resistance to any antiviral. So, you need more than one. We learned that from the HIV antivirals. We need to treat people with three, and then, you really minimize resistance. The same thing with [[:hepatitis C virus]]. You use combinations of two and then you eliminate infection without resistance. I think we learned a lot from those two viruses. We can’t just use one. So, we have this [[:molnupiravir]] (from [[:Merck]]  (MRK) - Get Report). It looks good for SARS-CoV-2, as an oral antiviral. It looks great in patients in phase two studies. But if you just license that one and use it, within months you’re going to have resistance, and it’s going to be useless, so we need to have more than one, especially at the start.
+TheStreet: Jumping off that point, as these drugs and vaccines come out, the big pharma names get a lot of attention, and deservedly so – [[:Pfizer]], [[:Moderna]]  (MRNA) - Get Report, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca  (AZN) - Get Report. But isn’t it university research that lays a lot of the ground work for what we know about viruses?
+Racaniello: Sure, in the U.S., anyway, it’s a combination of the [[:National Institutes of Health]] and then to a lesser extent the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense and the Department of Agriculture, and then the universities kick in some, but I think they should do more….
+But NIH’s budget is about $37 billion a year, and that’s just pathetic. If you think about the return on investment for things like (gene-editing tool) CRISPR, recombinant DNA, polymerase chain reaction – PCR – it’s huge. This pandemic has cost a trillion and a fraction of that could have been used beforehand to make antivirals that could have stopped the pandemic. They don’t invest enough in science research in this country. India and China are starting to outpace us. They get it. Science can save the population.
+© 2021 TheStreet, Inc. All rights reserved. Action Alerts PLUS is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.((https://web.archive.org/web/20210404153755/https://www.thestreet.com/latest-news/there-are-no-covid-super-strains-yet-says-virologist-vincent-racaniello))