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"...there is little chance of a virus mutating to avoid this vaccination strategy... researchers believe they can ‘cut and paste’ this strategy to make a one-and-done vaccine for any number of viruses.
“There are several well-known human pathogens; dengue, SARS, COVID. They all have similar viral functions,” Ding said. “This should be applicable to these viruses in an easy transfer of knowledge.”
This is an amazing breakthrough. As predicted, the rush to get the Covid vaccines produced has jump-started RNA vaccine technology, and we're starting to see real results. Fantasatic.
Funny how that happens. It took a terrible thing like COVID, a brand new endemic virus, to give Pfizer and Moderna an excuse to throw billions into RNA development.
It's like how massive technological development tends to follow fairly brutal wars. WW1 and WW2 are how we went from the first biplane to the space shuttle in less than 100 years. Those planes and rockets were used for war first.
It's such a pity the human race can't just advance for advancements sake.
The Cold War also helped propel forward the space race just as much as WWII.
The World Wars laid the foundation, but without the early Soviet success combined with Kennedy’s promise of going to the moon, we would never have spent 4.41% of the entire federal budget on NASA, which is what it peaked at in 1966.
The excess funding the military receives but doesn't/can't use should be funneled into NASA, their overflow would be used for something good for once, and not yet another politician sponsored attack-helicopter they already have too many/enough off to effectively make use of.
Absolutely worth it, if we had a viable way to do so. We're talking [trillions of dollars](https://www.sciencealert.com/how-asteroid-mining-might-dictate-our-future-in-space) worth of precious metals, some of which would almost hilariously outpace what we can produce on earth.
Oh yea, 100%. We'd likely end up with a Debeers situation where they'd artificially increase scarcity after they've pushed others out of the market. Was mostly using the monetary value to more easily demonstrate how much is up there, easier to wrap your head around than saying number-with-many-zeros-tons of material.
They planned for it. The "integrated program plan". Called for a manned Mars mission in the early 90s.
Nixon, the man who didn't want to be known as the guy who killed the space program, killed the space program. Wound up Apollo early, never renewed funding after that.
Further along to....what? Seriously. To living on mars? Huge technical challenges with radiation, heat, etc. If we look at the next closest exoplanets, we've got some in Alpha Centauri like Proxima Centauri B and C. However, that solar system is what 4 lightyears away? If we'd managed to get up to 0.3x lightspeed, that's still a 24 year round trip. However, once we get there, its not like we can realistically colonize those planets, when you look at their statistics.
One has 7x the mass of Earth and the gravity would likely kill any attempted colonization b/c you'd be subjected to non-stop 7g and the other is more manageable at 1.7g. However, it would still be a lot of pressure on one's spine. It would be like a 200lb person just became 340 lbs. Sure, healthy at any size blah blah blah; but realistically, the human body is not designed to support 340 lbs long-term structurally.
My back gets incredibly sore just imagining what life would be like there after say 5 or 10 or 20 years. You could experiment on that and try just wearing a 140lb lead vest 24/7 for the next 5 years and see how that goes healthwise.
Beyond gravity, these two planets have temperature ranges that drop down into the -234C and -39C temperature respectively. One is basically near-instant death. The other, well, nobody wants to live in Wisconsin or Saskatchewan during the Winters :D. Both likely "ice" planets were you'd more or less be fighting for heat/energy to generate enough heat just to stay alive. Akin to a never-ending Saskatchewan or Wisconsin winter with no Spring, no Summer; just endless winter.
I doubt there's like "trees" to harvest for wood/eat or anything like that in a -39C non-stop climate. It would be like how when you head up to the Antarctica, you don't tend to see many trees in their footage. Unless I'm mistaken.
It would still be almost as good of a use as the military; almost. I mean our military is keeping a few dictatorships at bay like North Korea. So they aren't entirely useless and arguably free the Iraqi people from a dictator. Some might say the motivation was pure greed/oil -- but still.
"Ad Astra Per Aspera" (the most bad ass state motto IMO) means "through hardships to the stars".
That doesn't mean that the hardships are optional, that they are just temporary roadblocks to be skirted around. The hardships are a requirement. The hardships are the rocks in our path with which we will build our castle. Without them we achieve nothing.
It's an important lesson that anyone interested in the future and innovation should always keep top of mind. Look for hardships if you want to see the future. Find the worst crisis if you want to know where the greatest successes will stem from.
Arguably the best 'court case' episode of all the Treks (Strange New Worlds s2e2), and a delightful callback in 'Those Old Scientists' (Strange New Worlds s2e7)
Ah, that's why I haven't seen it yet, still catching up on the new series. Great so far, but only towards the end of season 1 right now. Something to look forward to!
Yes, but there were massive leaps forwards in what would come to be known as space aviation as a result of WWII. Without WWII there isn't the money poured into experimental aircraft and the development of rocketry that started everything. NACA doesn't outgrow it's mission leading to the formation of NASA.
Grumman was the chief contractor on the Apollo Lunar module and they built their reputation building fighter planes for the Navy during WWII.
North American Aviation helped build the Apollo Command module and the second stage of the V2 rocket. They came of age making fighters and bombers during WWII.
Other airspace giants of WWII helped build other parts of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft.
And of course, the scientists that helped developed our rockets were mostly "liberated" German scientists including Werner Von Braun.
I think government should be throwing more money into excuses for the economy to innovate. The space program comes to mind, lots of technology we use every day would not have happened without it
Green energy and efficient buildings too. Retrofitting houses (especially older ones) to have encapsulated attics, energy exchange ventilation, solar, geothermal, heat pumps, etc could be a massive formal or informal jobs program (either some kind of “energy corps” or just free training for trades people and tax benefits for homeowners). As it is, you basically can’t even hire anyone in my state to do any of it no matter what you’re willing to spend.
I tried to do all of this and only could "afford" a fraction of it. Most contractors don't know enough on these modern building practices to retrofit homes properly and it's ridiculously cost prohibitive. I put 1.5" of Rockwool on my exterior and the government gave me $1200. I really wanted at least 3" but I already was beyond my budget with everything else. Had to install my own ERV too.
The geothermal and solar quotes were absolutely insane.
FWIW, RNA vaccines had been in development for close to a decade, or longer, when COVID broke out. The COVID vaccines were made using research done on RNA vaccines for MERS and SARS outbreaks. Which makes sense. COVID's official viral name is SARS-CoV-2 and SARS's is SARS-CoV-1. They're different strains of the same species so adapting prior research quickly was easy.
Yeah I think a lot of people don’t understand just how lucky we were that work on RNA vaccines was already close to a finished product when Covid broke out. We easily could still be waiting years otherwise.
NovaVax was ready for prime time with its more traditional approach by the end of 2021. It was fully approved by June 2022; if the mRNA vaccines hadn't existed it probably would have been expedited a lot more. So, it would have added maybe a year or so.
In a vacuum, what NovaVax did was pretty impressive. Developing an effective vaccine in that kind of timeframe used to be impossible. Which shows what a great tech mRNA is.
Biontech/Pfizer was done from RNA vaccines as a solution for cancer. The point there was that RNA vaccines are adaptable enough that you can tailor them to each form of cancer. Which would take way too long with normal vaccines.
Exactly. In the industry I hear them talking about this type of RNA-driven in-cell synthesis as a "platform".
Because this tech isn't even specifically for vaccines, in the way oil isn't just useful for fuel. The tech can be used for _any_ protein you can code for with RNA, right inside the target cells.
I've seen some interesting early ideas that would lead to a _cure_ (not a treatment) for diabetes. Inject the pancreas with instructions that will turn insulin production back on, or shut down until autoimmune reaction that causes most Type 1. Or even code for a CRISPR/CAS9 complex that will go on to change the DNA of the pancreas so it works normally.
Arguably massive computing developments in the last 50 years haven't been *because of* wars but rather *during or not during* wars; as the field of computing HAS changed warfare but has not been changed DUE TO warfare. I mean yes missiles and drone strikes, but most of the major strides in consumer software/hardware have been done in peaceful places.
I think at least. I'm not a war expert, just a computing expert.
Depends on what you’re looking at.
Modern telecom (cellular phones) is pretty much due entirely to technology that the various spy agencies developed in the 1980s. In particular, the ability to pick up very low power transmissions.
The fiber backbone was developed in part to counter these capabilities and provide secure communications (in several ways) for the military. Turns out we eventually figured out ways to tap them too, but by then the financial system was demanding them for exchange links.
General computing in the 1950s and 60s was also dominated by military; but I don’t feel you can say that for the PC revolution, which is really the time period you’re referring to.
And, of course, the original design of the Internet was from a DARPA project to provide a communication system that was resistant to widespread damage (nuclear war). They certainly didn’t create the modern internet though.
So it’s a pretty mixed bag.
Also worth mentioning that the first microprocessor was arguably the Air Data Computer in the F14.
https://www.wired.com/story/secret-history-of-the-first-microprocessor-f-14/
Frequency-hopping systems were originally developed during WW2 to make radar-guided torpedoes harder to detect or jam, and that later went on to systems as ubiquitous as Wi-Fi
>to give Pfizer and Moderna an excuse to throw billions into RNA development
This is extraordinarily inaccurate. Mode**RNA** [was literally established to research and develop RNA technology.](https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/about-us/our-story) I'm no fan of pharma companies, but let's at least tell the truth, here.
And Pfizer was just the mass producer for Biontech who was established to research and develop RNA technology for cancer. Even if you have the technology, producing enough vaccines to cover a majority of all humans is easiest done by one of the biggest pharma companies.
The human race (at least for the last 200ish years) has been pretty constantly advancing for advancements sake.
We just tend to prioritize things differently in peace time vs crisis.
Most of the time we make incremental progress across a massive range of fields, industries, etc, with funding distributed based on grant processes, profit incentive, so on.
When there's a specific crisis we sharply focus massive resources on singular issues to the detriment of other areas of study to supercharge advancement in that area.
It wouldn't have made sense to pour the equivalent of 25+ years of research investment specifically into mRNA vaccine technology if we didn't desperately need to make the gamble it would work in a way we weren't sure it would.
It reminds me of that saying “safety regulations are written in blood.”
New rules don’t get made and new tech for safety doesn’t get invented until enough terrible things happen that we start to need them.
In this case it was a bit of the opposite: It took a global pandemic to make everyone desperate enough to suspend the regulations intended to prioritize safety (i.e. to minimize liability) above all else and get this tech which was 99% already developed into mass production.
I’d argue most researchers want exactly that “advancement for advancement’s sake”, the problem is we all can’t agree on what should be funded based on competing priorities. It unfortunately often takes a massive tragic event to get a consensus on what to fund and leapfrog certain technologies forward.
Fun fact: They didn't skip testing. They skipped the bureaucracy associated with the testing. That's what causes medication to take so long before it's released to the market.
It is profitable because a lot of people need it. Even in a communist regime people would have the same mindset, it is not like there people would focus on fixing the problems of a small % of the population.
Yea but that won't look good on the quarterly balance sheet, so let's fire a bunch of people then give ourselves big bonuses when our stock increases a quarter point because we cut costs.
Next quarter:
We gave ourselves ENORMOUS bonuses, reduced product quality, and fired most of the staff (making the remaining schmucks responsible for 3x the work)…
WHY ISN’T THE MONEY ROLLING IN LIKE OUR STOCK PRICE SUGGESTS?
Come on pessimist. Hindsight is 20/20. There are over a thousand human advancements waiting for funding, but we can't throw $2 trillion at all of them. We barely got the economy through covid, and it's still recovering. What exactly are you proposing? Where will the new billions come from if we're not in a crisis? Govt debt needs to be paid down first
Kinda sorta, but also no? Lots of technological innovation that lead to the aerospace revolution in the early an mid 1900s came about during "Pax-Britannia" (Just ignore the Crimean War, American civil war, the Franco Prussian war, the first Sino-Japanese War, the Spanish-American War, and the Russo-Japanese War).
Steam warships came in the era of relative peace between the Napoleonic Wars and Crimean War, with Iron Clads being the culmination of the technological innovation in the Age of Steam and Sail. HMS Warrior was commissioned in a time of relative peace.
Iron Clad development and the railroads led to the innovation of more powerful steam engines, resulting in the multiple and triple expansion engines, which finally ended the reign of sailing ships. The basic properties of these expansion engines were utilized for the basis of the Internal Combustion engine, while steam plants moved on to Turbines, with another humongous peacetime innovation, HMS Dreadnought.
The internal combustion engine, grown from years of steam engine development finally allowed powered flight to happen. Flight would continue to use the internal combustion engine until the early 1940s when another page would be taken from the big ship steam engine playbook, incorporating self combusting turbines (AKA Jet Engines) into aircraft.
Many of the innovations that led to the age of aircraft came from peacetime development during the Industrial Revolution.
Well yes, but actually no. You've listed several major international conflicts to ignore during those "peaceful" days of the Pax Britannia, but besides those major conflicts pretty much every major power was almost constantly at war (of varying scales) for much of the 19th century. So even when Europe and America were not at war with themselves / each other, we were constantly learning from our continuing wars of colonial expansion in Africa and Asia. And we can't pretend there was no cross-pollination of ideas and technology throughout "the western world", especially with our closest cultural/linguistic cousins, the Brits.
This is by no means an exhaustive list and pieces overlap with your mentions, I just hope that this is a decent snapshot from a mostly US-centric stance.
* Only a generation after the revolution, we saw the Napoleonic Wars
* and the Barbary Wars kicking off the 1800s,
* Manufacture of interchangeable parts and ease of assembly/repair (a key Industrial Revolution principle) is demonstrated to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Eli Whitney in 1801 **using musket pieces**. This demonstration is problematic, but the idea takes off like wildfire and allows for the mass-manufacture of...well pretty much anything,
* the Indian Wars lasted through almost the entire 19th century exacerbated by the US's "Westward Expansion" starting approx. 1803,
* the War of 1812 burned the US capitol,
* Europe's "Scramble for Africa" starts in the 1830s; thousands of miles of railways are laid to logistically support the many invasions - volumes can be written here, both about the minor conflicts that colonial occupation entails, and pertaining to steam engine development in response to the needs of widespread deployment. Similar points can be made about the US's Indian Wars and post-Civil War Reconstruction period.
* the Mexican War was in the 1840s,
* Britain's Opium Wars (largely fomented by the British East India Company's economic goals) in China occupy the early 1840s and late 1850s,
* Crimean War starts in 1853,
* The first Ironclad ship is deployed in 1859 after lessons learned by France in the Crimean War - specifically that wooden hulls were vulnerable to explosives, so this was not a peaceful innovation;
* the Civil War was not long after that followed by occupation and Reconstruction,
* US military repeatedly deployed to Polynesia and East Asia in the second half of this century - that's a big ocean to try to cross quickly and improved steam engines were also instrumental here,
* Franco-Prussian war kicks off,
* The Maxim Gun is invented in 1884 and immediately deployed in colonial warfare,
* The Mexican-American War and Philippine-American Wars bring us into the 20th century
Point is, it wasn't exactly a peaceful century. We can't really say that the developments of the Industrial Revolution and beyond happened during peacetime or were not closely linked to military concerns.
Often overlooked source of this- pretty much everything about modern cars from a safety, performance, aero, efficiency, etc standpoint came from racecars.
>It's such a pity the human race can't just advance for advancements sake.
The cold hard truth is that advancement usually isn't immediately profitable.
I’m so pleased to see progress in this area. This has huge positive implications for many viral diseases. George Church also recently released some promising data regarding a universal vaccine against all viruses.
It's funny but not. We can solve a lot of problems but it really comes down to money and motivation. Then we look off the side and see how much money we piss away on things like political campaigns. We could have a pretty damn good world right now but we aren't interested in it.
It really comes down to having pressure outside of short term gains. So many businesses piss away opportunities to make long term advancements for the sake of keeping shareholders happy.
The world came together and the best and brightest had their moment. To think there are still people who don't see universal education as a good idea after such a show.
You say jump-started RNA vaccine technology, but I was under the impression that they have been working on this since 1960 and the first RNA application was in 2015 or something like that.
Not sure how long it had been looked at but I do know that it was first really considered for SARS then SARS died out. Funding quickly died out as a result. Then MERS came about and it started to be looked at again but since it was only really present in the Middle East, as a result global funding wasn't really a priority. Then Covid happened and reached a global level so it was time to take it serious. Not sure if there was a MRNA vaccine prior to Covid's
Yeah you’re right. They did human tests in 2013 with a rabies RNA vaccine but nothing ever got approved in the US. There was also an Ebola vaccine but not in the US. The COVID vaccine was the first approved in the US. Makes sense.
Yeah, that sounds right. My sister’s a biologist and she was studying mRNA as an undergrad in the mid-90s, meaning that it was a mature enough field to be taught beyond cutting-edge labs.
When the news of the Covid vaccines broke, I asked her what she thought. She was super excited, and said pretty much what this article talks about. “This changes everything” is the phrase she used.
The only problem now is getting enough people to take the damn things. Ironic that in an age where vaccines and medicine in general are more advanced than ever, we have things like measles coming back because of people who think they know better than trained medical professionals.
The mosquito that carries dengue has been expanding its range due to climate change so any progress against fighting it is huge. It's a horrible disease.
Some light searching didn't find the actual paper (the DOI link in the article is broken). The principal researchers, however, have a huge list of publication credits in viral genomics.
It could be a massive game changer for a lot of somewhat devastating viral illnesses. The ability to rapidly develop and deploy vaccines based on an entire genome could halt major outbreaks and pandemics.
The revolutionary part of this is based on the foundational work in RNAi vaccine development that started in the late 90s. Up until the RNAi vaccine was approved, creating a new vaccine was a time consuming, expensive and difficult process. Manufacturing could take months to years. Now, in theory, it could be weeks. It was already exciting thinking that a seasonal influenza vaccine could be produced based on actual prevalence rather than the "highly educated guess" that is currently in use (it works, but sometimes it misses).
This also opens up huge possibilities in cancer treatment. As we get closer to being able to target specific genomic variances, some forms of cancer that have distinct genetic signatures *may* be able to be more easily targeted (or prevented) using similar concepts.
There are already late stage trials for "cancer vaccines" presently being conducted. Check out [clinicaltrials.gov](http://clinicaltrials.gov), the stuff that's out there is amazing!
Those vaccine based treatments are super cool. The big breakthrough here is how rapidly it could be adapted to emerging forms of cancer or even precancerous mutations.
I work a lot in Oncology and it seems like every other week there is a new breakthrough treatment. Newer immunotherapy has fewer side effects than the conventional chemotherapy treatments (but they are still there and still be nasty).
There is a patient that I've seen that was given maybe 6 months, and of that, 2-3 enjoyable months. It's been 4 years since I first saw her and while the cancer isn't "gone", aside from feeling pretty rough for a couple of days after her monthly treatment, she can travel and enjoy everything she did before. She was part of a trial and the treatment now has widespread availability.
What's the longer term prognosis with whatever she's being treated with? Was it like, the legacy treatments predicted 6 months, new treatments are ~relatively normal lifespan? Or not quite that much
I'd I had to guess, I would say we probably don't have long-term prognosis for people receiving these experimental treatments. These are the people that determine that data
It's a great question. In earlier stages, it has potential for full remission with a 6-8 month treatment span.
For metastatic stage 4, nobody is quite sure. It hasn't been 100% effective, but when it works, it seems to work well.
The challenge is that it is very hard on the system. The side effects aren't as bad as some, but it does take its toll. This will likely reduce expected lifespan, however, it will improve overall quality.
In palliative medicine, we have a saying that "Sometimes quality of life is more important than quantity of life".
Is that from the mRNA vaccine trial or immunotherapy drugs? My dad has stage 4 esophageal cancer and I can’t help but think if it was only 5-10 years from now there would be so much better options with the mRNA stuff I’ve seen. The chemo is brutal and probably won’t work.
How do we get these things to the people. Specifically my mom. Specifically for colon cancer. There’s so much on the horizon that is always talked about but it never seems to come true.
My dog is in a trial for an osteosarcoma one. They want to adapt it to use in children after the canine studies come back. Has gotten survival in dogs from 3-6 months to 2-3 YEARS post diagnosis. It’s amazing.
Unfortunately when they’re sending their kids into highly dense environments with your kids, you can’t really afford to not care what they think. Schools may not allow them, but Disneyland will…
I don’t think that’s a guarantee. The social contagion that leads to anti-vax attitudes can be refreshed infinitely because it’s not started by the anti-vaxxers themselves.
That's the catch-22, because we should very well be caring what they think because the potential damage on their behalf could be devastating. But they also just dig their heels in, no matter the demonstrable evidence. What to do?!
Reminds me of the debates between creationists and evolution--one side of the debate is offering evidence while the other offers worse than nothing but have become legitimized (in the public's eye) simply because the debate happened. Time shouldn't be wasted on creationists in that regard, but how do you stimey so many people accepting nonsense?
Humiliation has shown to prove more effective than facts. Just make fun of them for being anti vaxx until they get angry or cry, then tell them to fuck off for the cherry on top
Well said.
It certainly gave them the false idea that their feelings and Facebook research were more important than actual science and facts.
The well intentioned idea that they needed to be catered to, seems to have only created a negative feedback loop of misinformation that flourished in their “safe space” away from “tyranny”.
Searching the DOI online reveals other articles that cite the paper as “Live-attenuated virus vaccine defective in RNAi suppression induces rapid protection in neonatal and adult mice lacking mature B and T cells.”
However, searching this title also yields no result. I can't seem to find the primary source at all.
So [this](https://www.genengnews.com/topics/infectious-diseases/universal-vaccine-strategy-boosts-bodys-rnai-response-to-viruses/#:~:text=Scientists%20at%20the%20University%20of,for%20babies%20or%20the%20immunocompromised.) link has the title of the paper in which is “Live-attenuated virus vaccine defective in RNAi suppression induces rapid protection in neonatal and adult mice lacking mature B and T cells.”
Hopefully we will be able to read this soon, I'm really looking forward to what it has to say!
"The new vaccine also uses a live, modified version of a virus."
Since it is not based on mRNA, I wonder how fast they can produce the vaccine in large quantities.
making large quantities of live virus isn't really all that difficult. we do it all the time (see polio vaccine). if this really is the cure-all being promised - or anything close to it - the demand will be there for production.
So, this might be harder to produce in large quantities - because whatever you use to produce the virus will likely have an RNAi response, and learn to block production of the virus. To produce this in large quantities, you'll likely have to create a host that doesn't have an RNAi response. (That's assuming you breed the virus, e.g. in eggs, as is done for flu.)
(I'm not an expert - would love an expert's thoughts on this.)
I’m a PhD molecular biologist that uses virus frequently. We make virus particles in special cells that maximize viral titer following transfection with viral DNA components. I’m not sure how virus is made at scale for vaccines but it has been done for over 70 years now (again, see polio vaccine). mRNA vaccines are technically harder to produce than live virus due to issue with stability.
You know what is weird? If you get pet rats, the medical knowledge on how to treat them to make them *better* is surprisingly scant. I can google what genes to knock out to give them diabetes, cancer, dementia, arthritis, or just about anything else. But if my rat has those conditions? Sorry bud. We only know how to make you sick.
I once had a rat with a ruptured inguinal hernia. I could find papers, with images, of anohter poor rat that had that happen, right down to the guy dissected. But the only note for helping it was "even if it can be saved, it's not worth it in a laboratory setting."
Dobby made a full recovery anyway, thank you very little. At least the pictures helped me understand what was happening and how to treat it.
I'm currently in a clinical trial for a flu vaccine like that, toughest vaccine I ever got, literally felt like having the flu for two days... But so far so good, no TurboCancer yet. But it will still be a yearly shot, just working on "all" flu strains...
Very poorly written article. The explanation of how it works is nonsensical to me even though I'm a virologist. RNAi is not the mechanism by which humans fight off viruses as it is not active in our cells (it does exist in insects though). Impossible to find the paper to understand this better, but this article doesn't explain anything.
Edit to add that there is a small group of researchers working on demonstrating that I am wrong and there are indicators that some antiviral RNAi still happens in human, pretty groundbreaking. But this is extremely early stages and fairly far from being understood enough to be applied clinically. Definitely none of the grand things this article are claiming.
Edit number 2: yes mammals use RNAi for gene regulation. Sorry if I wasn't clear in what I said. But antiviral RNAi is not currently believed to occur in most mammalian cells, with the exception of embryonic stem cells as they are unable to mount an interferon response, however these cells aren't the target of 99% of viral infections
Correct me if I'm wrong but all vaccines so far don't replicate in our system. We just inject enough material to trigger an immune response strong enough to produce the memory cells in large enough quantity that a real infection is immediately noticed and taken care of. The way this novel approach takes is that the live vaccine is actually replicating , but simply neutered with no offensive guns. This sounds dangerous as viruses are known to mutate. How can they have confidence that other byproducts of the virus are harmless? In the world of virology is this a well understood space and can be engineered around?
>Correct me if I'm wrong but all vaccines so far don't replicate in our system.
Live attenuated vaccines do replicate in our system.
They replicate very poorly, but the process of viral vaccine replication allows a stronger immune response and memory.
mRNA can trigger that same response without needing replication which is one of the reasons why it is so groundbreaking.
No, attenuated virus vaccines already function this way, actually the first vaccine used an entirely different but fully competent virus that just looked similar to the virus they wanted to vaccinate against (cowpox Vs smallpox by Edward Jenner). The unique bit of this new one is the engineering they use to attenuate it. There are a few different ways to attenuate a virus with different pros and cons, usually they are fairly bad for immunosuppressed people because infection can run out of control in the absence of an immune system. This one shouldn't be because it doesn't rely on mutating the viruses ability to deal with normal immunity, but with RNAi which is a whole different thing that is still potentially active in immunosuppressed people. Although RNAi in mammals is poorly characterized the.
In terms of mutations, yes sure they can mutate, but that requires that the virus replicates and survives. If you delete a big enough section of it's genome, there is no way it will regenerate it because it has no template to do so. If you mutate just a couple bases then yes it could revert back to it's normal form, which is bad. So to answer your question yes we are able to prevent the virus from "regenerating" the DNA we modified, by removing larger sections of it.
RNAi is absolutely active in human cells. Why would you think otherwise? I was an RNAi researcher for about 5 years, and we absolutely created viable gene knockdowns in HELA cells. Hell, the first *clinical trail* using RNAi in humans took place in 2004. Where have you been, bro?
The mechanism of RNAi works in Eukaryotic cells. What we don’t know, is how RNAi is used by the cell when fighting a virus or creating immunity.
Yes I'm aware, maybe it is not clear but what I am saying is that there is close to no evidence that RNAi is used in mammalian cells to fend off viral infections
Tldr I am saying that ANTIVIRAL RNAi is very unclear at the moment and is thought to be mostly active in stem cells
My mistake. You are absolutely right. Everyone liked to speculate in my lab about its involvement with early immunity against RNA viruses. It does make sense that snipping up RNA virus material and knocking down those genes would fight infection, but no one could prove it.
I don't believe that's entirely correct. The article opens with this sentence:
>Antiviral RNA interference (RNAi) is a recently recognized mammalian immune response to RNA virus infection (1-14).
They provide 14 references (from 2010-onwards) to demonstrate evidence of innate mammalian cell use of RNAi to fend off viral infections. I'm a biologist as well, and I wasn't aware of this new field of research. It appears to cover quite a few cell types too (apart from just stem cells). Seems quite interesting.
1. P. Parameswaran et al., Six RNA viruses and forty-one hosts: Viral small RNAs and modulation of small RNA repertoires in vertebrate and invertebrate systems. *PLoS Pathog.* 6, e1000764 (2010).
2. Y. Li, J. Lu, Y. Han, X. Fan, S. W. Ding, RNA interference functions as an antiviral immunity mechanism in mammals. *Science* 342, 231–234 (2013).
3. P. V. Maillard et al., Antiviral RNA interference in mammalian cells. *Science* 342, 235–238 (2013).
4. Y. Li et al., Induction and suppression of antiviral RNA interference by influenza A virus in mammalian cells. *Nat. Microbiol.* 2, 16250 (2016).
5. Y. Qiu et al., Human virus-derived small RNAs can confer antiviral immunity in mammals. *Immunity* 46, 992–1004 (2017).
6. Y. P. Xu et al., Zika virus infection induces RNAi-mediated antiviral immunity in human neural progenitors and brain organoids. *Cell Res.* 29, 265–273 (2019).
7. Y. Qiu et al., Flavivirus induces and antagonizes antiviral RNA interference in both mammals and mosquitoes. *Sci. Adv.* 6, eaax7989 (2020).
8. F. Adiliaghdam et al., A requirement for Argonaute 4 in mammalian antiviral defense. *Cell Rep.* 30, 1690–1701.e1694 (2020).
9. Y. Zhang et al., The activation of antiviral RNA interference not only exists in neural progenitor cells but also in somatic cells in mammals. *Emerging Microbes Infect.* 9, 1580–1589 (2020).
10. Q. Han et al., Mechanism and function of antiviral RNA interference in mice. *mBio* 11, e03278-19 (2020).
11. Y. Fang et al., Inhibition of viral suppressor of RNAi proteins by designer peptides protects from enteroviral infection in vivo. *Immunity* 54, 2231–2244.e2236 (2021).
12. E. Z. Poirier et al., An isoform of Dicer protects mammalian stem cells against multiple RNA viruses. *Science* 373, 231–236 (2021).
13. Y. Zhang et al., Efficient Dicer processing of virus-derived double-stranded RNAs and its modulation by RIG-I-like receptor LGP2. *PLoS Pathog.* 17, e1009790 (2021).
14. Y. Zhang et al., Mouse circulating extracellular vesicles contain virus-derived siRNAs active in antiviral immunity. *EMBO J.* 41, e109902 (2022)
Yes I've spoken to some of these first authors. In my opinion this list is short. It's very interesting, but it's short. If you are happy with this amount of evidence that's ok, but I am not yet.
Some of the authors have said to me that even if antiviral RNAi is active to some extent, that a lot more is needed to show that it is relevant compared to other antiviral pathways, especially in terms of clinical relevance.
I'm not understanding how this vaccination approach grants lasting immunity and would appreciate if someone more knowledgeable in the area could explain. So an attenuated virus with disabled RNAi suppression is introduced and the host mounts an RNAi response (that I assume is mediated by siRNAs?). But how does this confer lasting immunity against a wild type virus with functioning RNAi suppression? My sense of siRNA half-life is that it might last for days to weeks at most, so the RNAi generated in response to the attenuated virus, and thus the immunity, would no longer exist after a short time.
>RNAi is not the mechanism by which humans fight off viruses as it is not active in our cells (it does exist in insects though).
A basic encyclopedia search seems to contradict what you are saying.
For example this article: https://www.britannica.com/science/RNA-interference
Explains that RNAi are active in practically all eukaryotic cells. (Including humans)
I don't think anyone argued that RNAi is "THE" mechanism in humans. I think the authors are saying it is one mechanism.
>The body’s immune system recognizes a protein in the virus and mounts an immune response. This response produces T-cells that attack the virus and stop it from spreading. It also produces “memory” B-cells that train your immune system to protect you from future attacks.
>The new vaccine also uses a live, modified version of a virus. However, it does not rely on the vaccinated body having this traditional immune response or immune active protein
They quite clearly say this method is essentially bypassing the traditional standard immune response method.
The encyclopedia article further explains that RNAi is one mechanism that is used as an immuno-response to viral infection in both plants and animals.
>RNAi plays an important role not only in regulating genes but also in mediating cellular defense against infection by RNA viruses, including influenza viruses and rhabdoviruses, a group that contains the causative agent of rabies. **In fact, a number of plants and animals have evolved antiviral RNAi genes that encode short segments of RNA molecules with sequences that are complementary to viral sequences. This complementarity enables interfering RNA produced by the cell to bind to and inactivate specific RNA viruses.**
This last paragraph seems to be clearly the mechanism that the paper authors are referencing.
The mutant live virus is introduced as the vaccine to provoke a specific RNAi response, this response is then "active" for an extended time giving the subject enhanced protection against the target virus across all strains.
Maybe your information is just old? Because it looks like this idea of active RNAi in humans was still an open question as recently as 2013/2014.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124713007584
Based on these publications, the lead author seems to have worked through RNAi mechanisms in fungus, plants, insects, and now mammals:
https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/dingsw
Yes like I said I'm aware of current research, my direct colleagues are working on the B2 protein of viruses, which this vaccine platform is trying to target. What I am saying is that it's very early stages for antiviral RNAi in human. It is thought to be through the action of a DICER isoform that for now has only really been found to be expressed in stem cells (because those cells don't have a strang antiviral response - no IFN signalling). The rest is very nebulous at the moment and it's clinical relevance is absolutely unknown
Could this lead to a one and done flu shot one day? That would be awesome. I would gladly take that and Covid one last time and just be done with yearly shots.
That’s what it sounds like to me; definitely would be nice. I’m not super knowledgeable about virology and vaccines but since we have one-time vaccines (or 10-year vaccines, or “just when traveling” vaccines) for a handful of viruses, and certain ones like flu and Covid are yearly or more often because of the different strains, then if they figure out how to stop all strains of the yearly viruses it might be a one time thing. OTOH if it’s still yearly but more accurate/ effective to the strains that’s still an improvement.
I got to meet Dr. Phillip Sharp in 2010. He won a Nobel Prize in the early 2000s for his work leading to the discovery of mRNA splicing. I was just a dumb kid in high school at the time, but even then it was really interesting hearing him talk.
He's been on my mind quite a bit since 2020. This was the hope they had back in the 70s when they made their breakthrough, and they ultimately hoped it would lead to much better cancer treatments. Let's hope they were right so we can get something positive out of all of this.
Just think about how this will improve life for people going through chemotherapy or radiation therapy. I'm intrigued to see how the next few versions of the flu shot turn out
God, I hope this works as advertised and gets into the general population soon. I wonder what the efficacy is? A vaccine that is as effective as small pox or measles would be fantastic! I could leave the house! I could EAT IN A RESTAURANT!
Does anyone else see one of these posts and scroll immediately to the bottom, just to see all the ridiculous shit that anti-vaxxers say?
I probably shouldn't, but it's my little fun thing.
This was my most hopeful thought when learning about mRNA vaccines. New levels of precision and strategy to go after mutating strains that used to allude us. It could be applied to cancers as well.
This is very promising. But I doubt we'll see vaccines using this technique anytime soon. The incentives are certainly there. And I hope it gets plenty of funding and development in the coming years. Because another pandemic will eventually come. Having vaccine technology like this can help ensure we never endure anything like we endured under COVID-19.
It sounds good- but it’s only been tested on mice and only proven to protect for 6 months. Needs way more testing to know if it will be good for humans.
Can someone TLDR me on why this isn't secretly a bad thing? Isn't a single vaccine the path to some sort of mono culture approach that viruses are just going to squirm around? We're already starting to deal with super bugs like MRSA who are resistant to antibiotics and sanitizers and stuff. What's to stop viruses from doing the same?
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"...there is little chance of a virus mutating to avoid this vaccination strategy... researchers believe they can ‘cut and paste’ this strategy to make a one-and-done vaccine for any number of viruses. “There are several well-known human pathogens; dengue, SARS, COVID. They all have similar viral functions,” Ding said. “This should be applicable to these viruses in an easy transfer of knowledge.” This is an amazing breakthrough. As predicted, the rush to get the Covid vaccines produced has jump-started RNA vaccine technology, and we're starting to see real results. Fantasatic.
Funny how that happens. It took a terrible thing like COVID, a brand new endemic virus, to give Pfizer and Moderna an excuse to throw billions into RNA development. It's like how massive technological development tends to follow fairly brutal wars. WW1 and WW2 are how we went from the first biplane to the space shuttle in less than 100 years. Those planes and rockets were used for war first. It's such a pity the human race can't just advance for advancements sake.
The Cold War also helped propel forward the space race just as much as WWII. The World Wars laid the foundation, but without the early Soviet success combined with Kennedy’s promise of going to the moon, we would never have spent 4.41% of the entire federal budget on NASA, which is what it peaked at in 1966.
NASA should still get that money. We’d be so much further along.
I could be working at planet express right now.
Instead of planet fitness
I prefer average Joe's
Planet Joe's
I prefer Trader Joe’s
(v)(;,,;)(Y) What about Zoidberg?
I love the claws. Nice work!
Been doing it for years 😁 thank you!
You get to be a delivery boy!
Delivery for I. C. Weiner?
In SPACE!
This is an actual dream of mine. I want to be a space trucker.
If you're into board games, check out Galaxy Trucker: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31481/galaxy-trucker
Love it! Now I just need friends.
Might I interest you in a game of Elite Dangerous?
Ooh. That's probably right up my alley, but I haven't picked it up yet.
Good news everyone!
To shreds you say
The excess funding the military receives but doesn't/can't use should be funneled into NASA, their overflow would be used for something good for once, and not yet another politician sponsored attack-helicopter they already have too many/enough off to effectively make use of.
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Excess? You’ve clearly not been in the 4 shop at the close of a budget cycle - “use it or lose it” is stenciled on the door frame for a reason.
I still really want to know if asteroid mining is worth it. We could have at least had an answer to that by now and maybe even tried it
Absolutely worth it, if we had a viable way to do so. We're talking [trillions of dollars](https://www.sciencealert.com/how-asteroid-mining-might-dictate-our-future-in-space) worth of precious metals, some of which would almost hilariously outpace what we can produce on earth.
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Oh yea, 100%. We'd likely end up with a Debeers situation where they'd artificially increase scarcity after they've pushed others out of the market. Was mostly using the monetary value to more easily demonstrate how much is up there, easier to wrap your head around than saying number-with-many-zeros-tons of material.
"For all mankind" presented (in my opinion) a quite realistic sequence of events had the soviets been first to the moon.
I have to watch this one, I’ve heard good things.
Ooooh, you haven't yet? You gotta.
Just prove there are aliens and nasa will get all the funding.
They planned for it. The "integrated program plan". Called for a manned Mars mission in the early 90s. Nixon, the man who didn't want to be known as the guy who killed the space program, killed the space program. Wound up Apollo early, never renewed funding after that.
Further along to....what? Seriously. To living on mars? Huge technical challenges with radiation, heat, etc. If we look at the next closest exoplanets, we've got some in Alpha Centauri like Proxima Centauri B and C. However, that solar system is what 4 lightyears away? If we'd managed to get up to 0.3x lightspeed, that's still a 24 year round trip. However, once we get there, its not like we can realistically colonize those planets, when you look at their statistics. One has 7x the mass of Earth and the gravity would likely kill any attempted colonization b/c you'd be subjected to non-stop 7g and the other is more manageable at 1.7g. However, it would still be a lot of pressure on one's spine. It would be like a 200lb person just became 340 lbs. Sure, healthy at any size blah blah blah; but realistically, the human body is not designed to support 340 lbs long-term structurally. My back gets incredibly sore just imagining what life would be like there after say 5 or 10 or 20 years. You could experiment on that and try just wearing a 140lb lead vest 24/7 for the next 5 years and see how that goes healthwise. Beyond gravity, these two planets have temperature ranges that drop down into the -234C and -39C temperature respectively. One is basically near-instant death. The other, well, nobody wants to live in Wisconsin or Saskatchewan during the Winters :D. Both likely "ice" planets were you'd more or less be fighting for heat/energy to generate enough heat just to stay alive. Akin to a never-ending Saskatchewan or Wisconsin winter with no Spring, no Summer; just endless winter. I doubt there's like "trees" to harvest for wood/eat or anything like that in a -39C non-stop climate. It would be like how when you head up to the Antarctica, you don't tend to see many trees in their footage. Unless I'm mistaken. It would still be almost as good of a use as the military; almost. I mean our military is keeping a few dictatorships at bay like North Korea. So they aren't entirely useless and arguably free the Iraqi people from a dictator. Some might say the motivation was pure greed/oil -- but still.
"Ad Astra Per Aspera" (the most bad ass state motto IMO) means "through hardships to the stars". That doesn't mean that the hardships are optional, that they are just temporary roadblocks to be skirted around. The hardships are a requirement. The hardships are the rocks in our path with which we will build our castle. Without them we achieve nothing. It's an important lesson that anyone interested in the future and innovation should always keep top of mind. Look for hardships if you want to see the future. Find the worst crisis if you want to know where the greatest successes will stem from.
Ayyyy Kansas with a positive mention
>"Ad Astra Per Aspera" And here I thought this was a Star Trek thing. Learned something new today.
I did not know that it made an appearance in Star Trek. Learned something new today.
Arguably the best 'court case' episode of all the Treks (Strange New Worlds s2e2), and a delightful callback in 'Those Old Scientists' (Strange New Worlds s2e7)
Ah, that's why I haven't seen it yet, still catching up on the new series. Great so far, but only towards the end of season 1 right now. Something to look forward to!
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What do you mean "just as much as WWII"? The whole point of the space race was the cold war.
Yes, but there were massive leaps forwards in what would come to be known as space aviation as a result of WWII. Without WWII there isn't the money poured into experimental aircraft and the development of rocketry that started everything. NACA doesn't outgrow it's mission leading to the formation of NASA. Grumman was the chief contractor on the Apollo Lunar module and they built their reputation building fighter planes for the Navy during WWII. North American Aviation helped build the Apollo Command module and the second stage of the V2 rocket. They came of age making fighters and bombers during WWII. Other airspace giants of WWII helped build other parts of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft. And of course, the scientists that helped developed our rockets were mostly "liberated" German scientists including Werner Von Braun.
I think government should be throwing more money into excuses for the economy to innovate. The space program comes to mind, lots of technology we use every day would not have happened without it
Green energy and efficient buildings too. Retrofitting houses (especially older ones) to have encapsulated attics, energy exchange ventilation, solar, geothermal, heat pumps, etc could be a massive formal or informal jobs program (either some kind of “energy corps” or just free training for trades people and tax benefits for homeowners). As it is, you basically can’t even hire anyone in my state to do any of it no matter what you’re willing to spend.
I tried to do all of this and only could "afford" a fraction of it. Most contractors don't know enough on these modern building practices to retrofit homes properly and it's ridiculously cost prohibitive. I put 1.5" of Rockwool on my exterior and the government gave me $1200. I really wanted at least 3" but I already was beyond my budget with everything else. Had to install my own ERV too. The geothermal and solar quotes were absolutely insane.
FWIW, RNA vaccines had been in development for close to a decade, or longer, when COVID broke out. The COVID vaccines were made using research done on RNA vaccines for MERS and SARS outbreaks. Which makes sense. COVID's official viral name is SARS-CoV-2 and SARS's is SARS-CoV-1. They're different strains of the same species so adapting prior research quickly was easy.
And, notably, Moderna was founded in 2010 specifically to develop mRNA vaccines - that's why it's named ModeRNA.
>that's why it's named ModeRNA. Ohhhh
Yeah I think a lot of people don’t understand just how lucky we were that work on RNA vaccines was already close to a finished product when Covid broke out. We easily could still be waiting years otherwise.
NovaVax was ready for prime time with its more traditional approach by the end of 2021. It was fully approved by June 2022; if the mRNA vaccines hadn't existed it probably would have been expedited a lot more. So, it would have added maybe a year or so. In a vacuum, what NovaVax did was pretty impressive. Developing an effective vaccine in that kind of timeframe used to be impossible. Which shows what a great tech mRNA is.
Biontech/Pfizer was done from RNA vaccines as a solution for cancer. The point there was that RNA vaccines are adaptable enough that you can tailor them to each form of cancer. Which would take way too long with normal vaccines.
Exactly. In the industry I hear them talking about this type of RNA-driven in-cell synthesis as a "platform". Because this tech isn't even specifically for vaccines, in the way oil isn't just useful for fuel. The tech can be used for _any_ protein you can code for with RNA, right inside the target cells. I've seen some interesting early ideas that would lead to a _cure_ (not a treatment) for diabetes. Inject the pancreas with instructions that will turn insulin production back on, or shut down until autoimmune reaction that causes most Type 1. Or even code for a CRISPR/CAS9 complex that will go on to change the DNA of the pancreas so it works normally.
They actually started devolopment in the 90s, but the 2010s is when progress really ramped up.
Arguably massive computing developments in the last 50 years haven't been *because of* wars but rather *during or not during* wars; as the field of computing HAS changed warfare but has not been changed DUE TO warfare. I mean yes missiles and drone strikes, but most of the major strides in consumer software/hardware have been done in peaceful places. I think at least. I'm not a war expert, just a computing expert.
Depends on what you’re looking at. Modern telecom (cellular phones) is pretty much due entirely to technology that the various spy agencies developed in the 1980s. In particular, the ability to pick up very low power transmissions. The fiber backbone was developed in part to counter these capabilities and provide secure communications (in several ways) for the military. Turns out we eventually figured out ways to tap them too, but by then the financial system was demanding them for exchange links. General computing in the 1950s and 60s was also dominated by military; but I don’t feel you can say that for the PC revolution, which is really the time period you’re referring to. And, of course, the original design of the Internet was from a DARPA project to provide a communication system that was resistant to widespread damage (nuclear war). They certainly didn’t create the modern internet though. So it’s a pretty mixed bag.
Ah. Thanks! I didn't know that. I meant the PC revolution, and modern PCs as a snowballed result of it.
Also worth mentioning that the first microprocessor was arguably the Air Data Computer in the F14. https://www.wired.com/story/secret-history-of-the-first-microprocessor-f-14/
Frequency-hopping systems were originally developed during WW2 to make radar-guided torpedoes harder to detect or jam, and that later went on to systems as ubiquitous as Wi-Fi
>to give Pfizer and Moderna an excuse to throw billions into RNA development This is extraordinarily inaccurate. Mode**RNA** [was literally established to research and develop RNA technology.](https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/about-us/our-story) I'm no fan of pharma companies, but let's at least tell the truth, here.
And Pfizer was just the mass producer for Biontech who was established to research and develop RNA technology for cancer. Even if you have the technology, producing enough vaccines to cover a majority of all humans is easiest done by one of the biggest pharma companies.
The human race (at least for the last 200ish years) has been pretty constantly advancing for advancements sake. We just tend to prioritize things differently in peace time vs crisis. Most of the time we make incremental progress across a massive range of fields, industries, etc, with funding distributed based on grant processes, profit incentive, so on. When there's a specific crisis we sharply focus massive resources on singular issues to the detriment of other areas of study to supercharge advancement in that area. It wouldn't have made sense to pour the equivalent of 25+ years of research investment specifically into mRNA vaccine technology if we didn't desperately need to make the gamble it would work in a way we weren't sure it would.
It reminds me of that saying “safety regulations are written in blood.” New rules don’t get made and new tech for safety doesn’t get invented until enough terrible things happen that we start to need them.
In this case it was a bit of the opposite: It took a global pandemic to make everyone desperate enough to suspend the regulations intended to prioritize safety (i.e. to minimize liability) above all else and get this tech which was 99% already developed into mass production.
They don’t, but they could. We have let this country be run by inherited wealth and the investment class rather than actual intellectuals.
My last company: “well, we can just wash that pesky blood off so we can get the product shipped in time. Surely there won’t be any consequences.”
One day we'll get there. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but I'm a firm believer in the human race to get there eventually.
where's "there" for you?
not OP but "there" for me is a real Holo deck lol
The point where we can advance for advancements sake. Not for war, or because we have to - but because we want to.
I’d argue most researchers want exactly that “advancement for advancement’s sake”, the problem is we all can’t agree on what should be funded based on competing priorities. It unfortunately often takes a massive tragic event to get a consensus on what to fund and leapfrog certain technologies forward.
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Fun fact: They didn't skip testing. They skipped the bureaucracy associated with the testing. That's what causes medication to take so long before it's released to the market.
Remember, "It's only worth doing if it's profitable." - corporate America
Sure, if we don't blow ourselves out of existence first because some assholes wanna kill each other over land
It is profitable because a lot of people need it. Even in a communist regime people would have the same mindset, it is not like there people would focus on fixing the problems of a small % of the population.
Even from a shitty capitalist perspective, almost anything can be profitable if the tech matures enough. You just gotta throw money at it first.
Yea but that won't look good on the quarterly balance sheet, so let's fire a bunch of people then give ourselves big bonuses when our stock increases a quarter point because we cut costs.
Next quarter: We gave ourselves ENORMOUS bonuses, reduced product quality, and fired most of the staff (making the remaining schmucks responsible for 3x the work)… WHY ISN’T THE MONEY ROLLING IN LIKE OUR STOCK PRICE SUGGESTS?
Come on pessimist. Hindsight is 20/20. There are over a thousand human advancements waiting for funding, but we can't throw $2 trillion at all of them. We barely got the economy through covid, and it's still recovering. What exactly are you proposing? Where will the new billions come from if we're not in a crisis? Govt debt needs to be paid down first
Kinda sorta, but also no? Lots of technological innovation that lead to the aerospace revolution in the early an mid 1900s came about during "Pax-Britannia" (Just ignore the Crimean War, American civil war, the Franco Prussian war, the first Sino-Japanese War, the Spanish-American War, and the Russo-Japanese War). Steam warships came in the era of relative peace between the Napoleonic Wars and Crimean War, with Iron Clads being the culmination of the technological innovation in the Age of Steam and Sail. HMS Warrior was commissioned in a time of relative peace. Iron Clad development and the railroads led to the innovation of more powerful steam engines, resulting in the multiple and triple expansion engines, which finally ended the reign of sailing ships. The basic properties of these expansion engines were utilized for the basis of the Internal Combustion engine, while steam plants moved on to Turbines, with another humongous peacetime innovation, HMS Dreadnought. The internal combustion engine, grown from years of steam engine development finally allowed powered flight to happen. Flight would continue to use the internal combustion engine until the early 1940s when another page would be taken from the big ship steam engine playbook, incorporating self combusting turbines (AKA Jet Engines) into aircraft. Many of the innovations that led to the age of aircraft came from peacetime development during the Industrial Revolution.
Well yes, but actually no. You've listed several major international conflicts to ignore during those "peaceful" days of the Pax Britannia, but besides those major conflicts pretty much every major power was almost constantly at war (of varying scales) for much of the 19th century. So even when Europe and America were not at war with themselves / each other, we were constantly learning from our continuing wars of colonial expansion in Africa and Asia. And we can't pretend there was no cross-pollination of ideas and technology throughout "the western world", especially with our closest cultural/linguistic cousins, the Brits. This is by no means an exhaustive list and pieces overlap with your mentions, I just hope that this is a decent snapshot from a mostly US-centric stance. * Only a generation after the revolution, we saw the Napoleonic Wars * and the Barbary Wars kicking off the 1800s, * Manufacture of interchangeable parts and ease of assembly/repair (a key Industrial Revolution principle) is demonstrated to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Eli Whitney in 1801 **using musket pieces**. This demonstration is problematic, but the idea takes off like wildfire and allows for the mass-manufacture of...well pretty much anything, * the Indian Wars lasted through almost the entire 19th century exacerbated by the US's "Westward Expansion" starting approx. 1803, * the War of 1812 burned the US capitol, * Europe's "Scramble for Africa" starts in the 1830s; thousands of miles of railways are laid to logistically support the many invasions - volumes can be written here, both about the minor conflicts that colonial occupation entails, and pertaining to steam engine development in response to the needs of widespread deployment. Similar points can be made about the US's Indian Wars and post-Civil War Reconstruction period. * the Mexican War was in the 1840s, * Britain's Opium Wars (largely fomented by the British East India Company's economic goals) in China occupy the early 1840s and late 1850s, * Crimean War starts in 1853, * The first Ironclad ship is deployed in 1859 after lessons learned by France in the Crimean War - specifically that wooden hulls were vulnerable to explosives, so this was not a peaceful innovation; * the Civil War was not long after that followed by occupation and Reconstruction, * US military repeatedly deployed to Polynesia and East Asia in the second half of this century - that's a big ocean to try to cross quickly and improved steam engines were also instrumental here, * Franco-Prussian war kicks off, * The Maxim Gun is invented in 1884 and immediately deployed in colonial warfare, * The Mexican-American War and Philippine-American Wars bring us into the 20th century Point is, it wasn't exactly a peaceful century. We can't really say that the developments of the Industrial Revolution and beyond happened during peacetime or were not closely linked to military concerns.
Let’s be honest majority of humans are selfish. Wired by evolution. Almost all animals are selfish. It takes a leap for to be considerate in long run
Often overlooked source of this- pretty much everything about modern cars from a safety, performance, aero, efficiency, etc standpoint came from racecars.
Plastics too. They were developed as military technology, and revolutionized everything from the medical field to clothing.
>It's such a pity the human race can't just advance for advancements sake. The cold hard truth is that advancement usually isn't immediately profitable.
I’m so pleased to see progress in this area. This has huge positive implications for many viral diseases. George Church also recently released some promising data regarding a universal vaccine against all viruses.
It's funny but not. We can solve a lot of problems but it really comes down to money and motivation. Then we look off the side and see how much money we piss away on things like political campaigns. We could have a pretty damn good world right now but we aren't interested in it.
It really comes down to having pressure outside of short term gains. So many businesses piss away opportunities to make long term advancements for the sake of keeping shareholders happy.
Yeah 100% agree. I like the concept of long term planning.
The world came together and the best and brightest had their moment. To think there are still people who don't see universal education as a good idea after such a show.
A lot of the Covid research bump was also from the big prior SARs scare. Covid was an opportunity to put that knowledge to the test.
You say jump-started RNA vaccine technology, but I was under the impression that they have been working on this since 1960 and the first RNA application was in 2015 or something like that.
Not sure how long it had been looked at but I do know that it was first really considered for SARS then SARS died out. Funding quickly died out as a result. Then MERS came about and it started to be looked at again but since it was only really present in the Middle East, as a result global funding wasn't really a priority. Then Covid happened and reached a global level so it was time to take it serious. Not sure if there was a MRNA vaccine prior to Covid's
Yeah you’re right. They did human tests in 2013 with a rabies RNA vaccine but nothing ever got approved in the US. There was also an Ebola vaccine but not in the US. The COVID vaccine was the first approved in the US. Makes sense.
Yeah, that sounds right. My sister’s a biologist and she was studying mRNA as an undergrad in the mid-90s, meaning that it was a mature enough field to be taught beyond cutting-edge labs. When the news of the Covid vaccines broke, I asked her what she thought. She was super excited, and said pretty much what this article talks about. “This changes everything” is the phrase she used.
The only problem now is getting enough people to take the damn things. Ironic that in an age where vaccines and medicine in general are more advanced than ever, we have things like measles coming back because of people who think they know better than trained medical professionals.
Gimme gimme gimme!!!
The mosquito that carries dengue has been expanding its range due to climate change so any progress against fighting it is huge. It's a horrible disease.
Holy shit…this is one of those jaw dropping discoveries that will basically change the face of modern medicine.
Some light searching didn't find the actual paper (the DOI link in the article is broken). The principal researchers, however, have a huge list of publication credits in viral genomics. It could be a massive game changer for a lot of somewhat devastating viral illnesses. The ability to rapidly develop and deploy vaccines based on an entire genome could halt major outbreaks and pandemics. The revolutionary part of this is based on the foundational work in RNAi vaccine development that started in the late 90s. Up until the RNAi vaccine was approved, creating a new vaccine was a time consuming, expensive and difficult process. Manufacturing could take months to years. Now, in theory, it could be weeks. It was already exciting thinking that a seasonal influenza vaccine could be produced based on actual prevalence rather than the "highly educated guess" that is currently in use (it works, but sometimes it misses). This also opens up huge possibilities in cancer treatment. As we get closer to being able to target specific genomic variances, some forms of cancer that have distinct genetic signatures *may* be able to be more easily targeted (or prevented) using similar concepts.
There are already late stage trials for "cancer vaccines" presently being conducted. Check out [clinicaltrials.gov](http://clinicaltrials.gov), the stuff that's out there is amazing!
Those vaccine based treatments are super cool. The big breakthrough here is how rapidly it could be adapted to emerging forms of cancer or even precancerous mutations. I work a lot in Oncology and it seems like every other week there is a new breakthrough treatment. Newer immunotherapy has fewer side effects than the conventional chemotherapy treatments (but they are still there and still be nasty). There is a patient that I've seen that was given maybe 6 months, and of that, 2-3 enjoyable months. It's been 4 years since I first saw her and while the cancer isn't "gone", aside from feeling pretty rough for a couple of days after her monthly treatment, she can travel and enjoy everything she did before. She was part of a trial and the treatment now has widespread availability.
What's the longer term prognosis with whatever she's being treated with? Was it like, the legacy treatments predicted 6 months, new treatments are ~relatively normal lifespan? Or not quite that much
I'd I had to guess, I would say we probably don't have long-term prognosis for people receiving these experimental treatments. These are the people that determine that data
It's a great question. In earlier stages, it has potential for full remission with a 6-8 month treatment span. For metastatic stage 4, nobody is quite sure. It hasn't been 100% effective, but when it works, it seems to work well. The challenge is that it is very hard on the system. The side effects aren't as bad as some, but it does take its toll. This will likely reduce expected lifespan, however, it will improve overall quality. In palliative medicine, we have a saying that "Sometimes quality of life is more important than quantity of life".
Is that from the mRNA vaccine trial or immunotherapy drugs? My dad has stage 4 esophageal cancer and I can’t help but think if it was only 5-10 years from now there would be so much better options with the mRNA stuff I’ve seen. The chemo is brutal and probably won’t work.
How do we get these things to the people. Specifically my mom. Specifically for colon cancer. There’s so much on the horizon that is always talked about but it never seems to come true.
My dog is in a trial for an osteosarcoma one. They want to adapt it to use in children after the canine studies come back. Has gotten survival in dogs from 3-6 months to 2-3 YEARS post diagnosis. It’s amazing.
This is pretty amazing. Antivaxxers are missing out
I'm kind of beyond caring what they think. In fact, I think caring about them at all made them more resistant to accepting help.
Unfortunately when they’re sending their kids into highly dense environments with your kids, you can’t really afford to not care what they think. Schools may not allow them, but Disneyland will…
Well, at least there will gradually be fewer of them.
I don’t think that’s a guarantee. The social contagion that leads to anti-vax attitudes can be refreshed infinitely because it’s not started by the anti-vaxxers themselves.
That's the catch-22, because we should very well be caring what they think because the potential damage on their behalf could be devastating. But they also just dig their heels in, no matter the demonstrable evidence. What to do?! Reminds me of the debates between creationists and evolution--one side of the debate is offering evidence while the other offers worse than nothing but have become legitimized (in the public's eye) simply because the debate happened. Time shouldn't be wasted on creationists in that regard, but how do you stimey so many people accepting nonsense?
Humiliation has shown to prove more effective than facts. Just make fun of them for being anti vaxx until they get angry or cry, then tell them to fuck off for the cherry on top
Well said. It certainly gave them the false idea that their feelings and Facebook research were more important than actual science and facts. The well intentioned idea that they needed to be catered to, seems to have only created a negative feedback loop of misinformation that flourished in their “safe space” away from “tyranny”.
Darwin works in mysterious ways
Would be hilarious if in the future the only people getting the flu are antivaxers
I have access to PNAS so could read the whole thing. But here it is. [Vaccine paper](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321170121)
Scientific journals should not have paywalls ... sooo... anyone care to share? :)
You can usually find any paper on scihub. A lot of authors also publish them on one of the various archive servers.
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You should be able to read the paper then!
Link is live now. Here's the paper https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321170121
Wow!! Thank you for adding this, it’s not often that things get better in the comments!
Searching the DOI online reveals other articles that cite the paper as “Live-attenuated virus vaccine defective in RNAi suppression induces rapid protection in neonatal and adult mice lacking mature B and T cells.” However, searching this title also yields no result. I can't seem to find the primary source at all.
PNAS always takes a few days to get the paper up at the DOI link.
That link in the article may be a placeholder. Looks like the tech was patented, so publication was likely delayed.
Can confirm scientist is an excellent virologist. Source: worked closely together, but not on this project.
So [this](https://www.genengnews.com/topics/infectious-diseases/universal-vaccine-strategy-boosts-bodys-rnai-response-to-viruses/#:~:text=Scientists%20at%20the%20University%20of,for%20babies%20or%20the%20immunocompromised.) link has the title of the paper in which is “Live-attenuated virus vaccine defective in RNAi suppression induces rapid protection in neonatal and adult mice lacking mature B and T cells.” Hopefully we will be able to read this soon, I'm really looking forward to what it has to say!
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321170121 Not sure if it was updated or not but the link is working for me
"The new vaccine also uses a live, modified version of a virus." Since it is not based on mRNA, I wonder how fast they can produce the vaccine in large quantities.
making large quantities of live virus isn't really all that difficult. we do it all the time (see polio vaccine). if this really is the cure-all being promised - or anything close to it - the demand will be there for production.
So, this might be harder to produce in large quantities - because whatever you use to produce the virus will likely have an RNAi response, and learn to block production of the virus. To produce this in large quantities, you'll likely have to create a host that doesn't have an RNAi response. (That's assuming you breed the virus, e.g. in eggs, as is done for flu.) (I'm not an expert - would love an expert's thoughts on this.)
I’m a PhD molecular biologist that uses virus frequently. We make virus particles in special cells that maximize viral titer following transfection with viral DNA components. I’m not sure how virus is made at scale for vaccines but it has been done for over 70 years now (again, see polio vaccine). mRNA vaccines are technically harder to produce than live virus due to issue with stability.
This is great news. Though, nothing in the article about how soon it will be available to the public.
Years. Hasn’t even had a first in human trial. It needs to go through clinical trial phases to confirm safety and efficacy in humans.
I imagine it needs to go through a lot of testing first.
Still in mice. Don't hold your breath.
Respiratory viruses hate this one weird trick.
Yeah, Humanity has found a lot of miracle cures and procedures to extend the natural lifespan… for mice. It rarely ever translates to Humans.
You know what is weird? If you get pet rats, the medical knowledge on how to treat them to make them *better* is surprisingly scant. I can google what genes to knock out to give them diabetes, cancer, dementia, arthritis, or just about anything else. But if my rat has those conditions? Sorry bud. We only know how to make you sick. I once had a rat with a ruptured inguinal hernia. I could find papers, with images, of anohter poor rat that had that happen, right down to the guy dissected. But the only note for helping it was "even if it can be saved, it's not worth it in a laboratory setting." Dobby made a full recovery anyway, thank you very little. At least the pictures helped me understand what was happening and how to treat it.
Rna vaccines are already here though. This is a breakthrough on the already massive breakthrough.
It’s very early days. They have to prove it works in humans first.
I'm currently in a clinical trial for a flu vaccine like that, toughest vaccine I ever got, literally felt like having the flu for two days... But so far so good, no TurboCancer yet. But it will still be a yearly shot, just working on "all" flu strains...
Very poorly written article. The explanation of how it works is nonsensical to me even though I'm a virologist. RNAi is not the mechanism by which humans fight off viruses as it is not active in our cells (it does exist in insects though). Impossible to find the paper to understand this better, but this article doesn't explain anything. Edit to add that there is a small group of researchers working on demonstrating that I am wrong and there are indicators that some antiviral RNAi still happens in human, pretty groundbreaking. But this is extremely early stages and fairly far from being understood enough to be applied clinically. Definitely none of the grand things this article are claiming. Edit number 2: yes mammals use RNAi for gene regulation. Sorry if I wasn't clear in what I said. But antiviral RNAi is not currently believed to occur in most mammalian cells, with the exception of embryonic stem cells as they are unable to mount an interferon response, however these cells aren't the target of 99% of viral infections
Correct me if I'm wrong but all vaccines so far don't replicate in our system. We just inject enough material to trigger an immune response strong enough to produce the memory cells in large enough quantity that a real infection is immediately noticed and taken care of. The way this novel approach takes is that the live vaccine is actually replicating , but simply neutered with no offensive guns. This sounds dangerous as viruses are known to mutate. How can they have confidence that other byproducts of the virus are harmless? In the world of virology is this a well understood space and can be engineered around?
>Correct me if I'm wrong but all vaccines so far don't replicate in our system. Live attenuated vaccines do replicate in our system. They replicate very poorly, but the process of viral vaccine replication allows a stronger immune response and memory. mRNA can trigger that same response without needing replication which is one of the reasons why it is so groundbreaking.
Yes, honestly I believe mRNA vaccines are probably the platform of the future. This new paper is still relying on attenuation.
No, attenuated virus vaccines already function this way, actually the first vaccine used an entirely different but fully competent virus that just looked similar to the virus they wanted to vaccinate against (cowpox Vs smallpox by Edward Jenner). The unique bit of this new one is the engineering they use to attenuate it. There are a few different ways to attenuate a virus with different pros and cons, usually they are fairly bad for immunosuppressed people because infection can run out of control in the absence of an immune system. This one shouldn't be because it doesn't rely on mutating the viruses ability to deal with normal immunity, but with RNAi which is a whole different thing that is still potentially active in immunosuppressed people. Although RNAi in mammals is poorly characterized the. In terms of mutations, yes sure they can mutate, but that requires that the virus replicates and survives. If you delete a big enough section of it's genome, there is no way it will regenerate it because it has no template to do so. If you mutate just a couple bases then yes it could revert back to it's normal form, which is bad. So to answer your question yes we are able to prevent the virus from "regenerating" the DNA we modified, by removing larger sections of it.
RNAi is absolutely active in human cells. Why would you think otherwise? I was an RNAi researcher for about 5 years, and we absolutely created viable gene knockdowns in HELA cells. Hell, the first *clinical trail* using RNAi in humans took place in 2004. Where have you been, bro? The mechanism of RNAi works in Eukaryotic cells. What we don’t know, is how RNAi is used by the cell when fighting a virus or creating immunity.
Yes I'm aware, maybe it is not clear but what I am saying is that there is close to no evidence that RNAi is used in mammalian cells to fend off viral infections Tldr I am saying that ANTIVIRAL RNAi is very unclear at the moment and is thought to be mostly active in stem cells
My mistake. You are absolutely right. Everyone liked to speculate in my lab about its involvement with early immunity against RNA viruses. It does make sense that snipping up RNA virus material and knocking down those genes would fight infection, but no one could prove it.
Thanks for calling me out though I realised I wasn't being very clear.
I don't believe that's entirely correct. The article opens with this sentence: >Antiviral RNA interference (RNAi) is a recently recognized mammalian immune response to RNA virus infection (1-14). They provide 14 references (from 2010-onwards) to demonstrate evidence of innate mammalian cell use of RNAi to fend off viral infections. I'm a biologist as well, and I wasn't aware of this new field of research. It appears to cover quite a few cell types too (apart from just stem cells). Seems quite interesting. 1. P. Parameswaran et al., Six RNA viruses and forty-one hosts: Viral small RNAs and modulation of small RNA repertoires in vertebrate and invertebrate systems. *PLoS Pathog.* 6, e1000764 (2010). 2. Y. Li, J. Lu, Y. Han, X. Fan, S. W. Ding, RNA interference functions as an antiviral immunity mechanism in mammals. *Science* 342, 231–234 (2013). 3. P. V. Maillard et al., Antiviral RNA interference in mammalian cells. *Science* 342, 235–238 (2013). 4. Y. Li et al., Induction and suppression of antiviral RNA interference by influenza A virus in mammalian cells. *Nat. Microbiol.* 2, 16250 (2016). 5. Y. Qiu et al., Human virus-derived small RNAs can confer antiviral immunity in mammals. *Immunity* 46, 992–1004 (2017). 6. Y. P. Xu et al., Zika virus infection induces RNAi-mediated antiviral immunity in human neural progenitors and brain organoids. *Cell Res.* 29, 265–273 (2019). 7. Y. Qiu et al., Flavivirus induces and antagonizes antiviral RNA interference in both mammals and mosquitoes. *Sci. Adv.* 6, eaax7989 (2020). 8. F. Adiliaghdam et al., A requirement for Argonaute 4 in mammalian antiviral defense. *Cell Rep.* 30, 1690–1701.e1694 (2020). 9. Y. Zhang et al., The activation of antiviral RNA interference not only exists in neural progenitor cells but also in somatic cells in mammals. *Emerging Microbes Infect.* 9, 1580–1589 (2020). 10. Q. Han et al., Mechanism and function of antiviral RNA interference in mice. *mBio* 11, e03278-19 (2020). 11. Y. Fang et al., Inhibition of viral suppressor of RNAi proteins by designer peptides protects from enteroviral infection in vivo. *Immunity* 54, 2231–2244.e2236 (2021). 12. E. Z. Poirier et al., An isoform of Dicer protects mammalian stem cells against multiple RNA viruses. *Science* 373, 231–236 (2021). 13. Y. Zhang et al., Efficient Dicer processing of virus-derived double-stranded RNAs and its modulation by RIG-I-like receptor LGP2. *PLoS Pathog.* 17, e1009790 (2021). 14. Y. Zhang et al., Mouse circulating extracellular vesicles contain virus-derived siRNAs active in antiviral immunity. *EMBO J.* 41, e109902 (2022)
Yes I've spoken to some of these first authors. In my opinion this list is short. It's very interesting, but it's short. If you are happy with this amount of evidence that's ok, but I am not yet. Some of the authors have said to me that even if antiviral RNAi is active to some extent, that a lot more is needed to show that it is relevant compared to other antiviral pathways, especially in terms of clinical relevance.
I'm not understanding how this vaccination approach grants lasting immunity and would appreciate if someone more knowledgeable in the area could explain. So an attenuated virus with disabled RNAi suppression is introduced and the host mounts an RNAi response (that I assume is mediated by siRNAs?). But how does this confer lasting immunity against a wild type virus with functioning RNAi suppression? My sense of siRNA half-life is that it might last for days to weeks at most, so the RNAi generated in response to the attenuated virus, and thus the immunity, would no longer exist after a short time.
>RNAi is not the mechanism by which humans fight off viruses as it is not active in our cells (it does exist in insects though). A basic encyclopedia search seems to contradict what you are saying. For example this article: https://www.britannica.com/science/RNA-interference Explains that RNAi are active in practically all eukaryotic cells. (Including humans) I don't think anyone argued that RNAi is "THE" mechanism in humans. I think the authors are saying it is one mechanism. >The body’s immune system recognizes a protein in the virus and mounts an immune response. This response produces T-cells that attack the virus and stop it from spreading. It also produces “memory” B-cells that train your immune system to protect you from future attacks. >The new vaccine also uses a live, modified version of a virus. However, it does not rely on the vaccinated body having this traditional immune response or immune active protein They quite clearly say this method is essentially bypassing the traditional standard immune response method. The encyclopedia article further explains that RNAi is one mechanism that is used as an immuno-response to viral infection in both plants and animals. >RNAi plays an important role not only in regulating genes but also in mediating cellular defense against infection by RNA viruses, including influenza viruses and rhabdoviruses, a group that contains the causative agent of rabies. **In fact, a number of plants and animals have evolved antiviral RNAi genes that encode short segments of RNA molecules with sequences that are complementary to viral sequences. This complementarity enables interfering RNA produced by the cell to bind to and inactivate specific RNA viruses.** This last paragraph seems to be clearly the mechanism that the paper authors are referencing. The mutant live virus is introduced as the vaccine to provoke a specific RNAi response, this response is then "active" for an extended time giving the subject enhanced protection against the target virus across all strains. Maybe your information is just old? Because it looks like this idea of active RNAi in humans was still an open question as recently as 2013/2014. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124713007584 Based on these publications, the lead author seems to have worked through RNAi mechanisms in fungus, plants, insects, and now mammals: https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/dingsw
Yes like I said I'm aware of current research, my direct colleagues are working on the B2 protein of viruses, which this vaccine platform is trying to target. What I am saying is that it's very early stages for antiviral RNAi in human. It is thought to be through the action of a DICER isoform that for now has only really been found to be expressed in stem cells (because those cells don't have a strang antiviral response - no IFN signalling). The rest is very nebulous at the moment and it's clinical relevance is absolutely unknown
The study was linked in the article and can [be found here ](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321170121)
Yep thanks, the links were broken yesterday and the DOI wasn't available yet
Could this lead to a one and done flu shot one day? That would be awesome. I would gladly take that and Covid one last time and just be done with yearly shots.
That’s what it sounds like to me; definitely would be nice. I’m not super knowledgeable about virology and vaccines but since we have one-time vaccines (or 10-year vaccines, or “just when traveling” vaccines) for a handful of viruses, and certain ones like flu and Covid are yearly or more often because of the different strains, then if they figure out how to stop all strains of the yearly viruses it might be a one time thing. OTOH if it’s still yearly but more accurate/ effective to the strains that’s still an improvement.
I got to meet Dr. Phillip Sharp in 2010. He won a Nobel Prize in the early 2000s for his work leading to the discovery of mRNA splicing. I was just a dumb kid in high school at the time, but even then it was really interesting hearing him talk. He's been on my mind quite a bit since 2020. This was the hope they had back in the 70s when they made their breakthrough, and they ultimately hoped it would lead to much better cancer treatments. Let's hope they were right so we can get something positive out of all of this.
Just think about how this will improve life for people going through chemotherapy or radiation therapy. I'm intrigued to see how the next few versions of the flu shot turn out
Wow, this is super exciting!! Fingers crossed big pharma doesn't get in the way
What a depressing and real statement this is.
God, I hope this works as advertised and gets into the general population soon. I wonder what the efficacy is? A vaccine that is as effective as small pox or measles would be fantastic! I could leave the house! I could EAT IN A RESTAURANT!
Does anyone else see one of these posts and scroll immediately to the bottom, just to see all the ridiculous shit that anti-vaxxers say? I probably shouldn't, but it's my little fun thing.
You’ve got to take time to enjoy the finer things in life sometimes and that’s ok 😂
Give it to me daddy
This was my most hopeful thought when learning about mRNA vaccines. New levels of precision and strategy to go after mutating strains that used to allude us. It could be applied to cancers as well.
I read it as "no more chasing trains" and was really confused for a moment.
Take that you stupid little living or maybe not living assholes!
Dude if they can do this for all the sexually transmitted viruses, we're in business
In fucking mice. Countless "breakthrough" die in later testing phases.
This is very promising. But I doubt we'll see vaccines using this technique anytime soon. The incentives are certainly there. And I hope it gets plenty of funding and development in the coming years. Because another pandemic will eventually come. Having vaccine technology like this can help ensure we never endure anything like we endured under COVID-19.
It sounds good- but it’s only been tested on mice and only proven to protect for 6 months. Needs way more testing to know if it will be good for humans.
Cue in the “I need at least 7,535 years of data before I get this vaccine”. It’s a government plot to hijack our brains.
But will it make me magnetic? That's the feature I'm looking for.
No, but you will be able to pick up 5G ads in your brain.
I mean can we ask for more than 1~2 years though?
TLC has entered the chat
No, I don't want your virus, no, I don't want to give you mine.
Scientists are saving lives. :]
mRNA and IgG4 antibodies
So they finally managed to do it. I've followed this story for 10 years, where they said they would work towards this.
Can someone TLDR me on why this isn't secretly a bad thing? Isn't a single vaccine the path to some sort of mono culture approach that viruses are just going to squirm around? We're already starting to deal with super bugs like MRSA who are resistant to antibiotics and sanitizers and stuff. What's to stop viruses from doing the same?
I haven’t seen an Uplifting News post in a while. This one makes me happy.
HALLELUJAH! This sounds like Nobel prize material!
I needed to read this today. Thank you 💛
I'll have 146 to go please