Vaccine developments
May. 18th, 2020 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitouthttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-18/vaccine-from-moderna-shows-early-signs-of-viral-immune-response
This is pretty exciting! Very small study, focused on safety. The mRNA vaccine produces an appropriate type and level of antibody response, so that is great, too. R. had the impression that mRNA required a pretty onerous cold chain. I poked around and was like, nope. Last year, a bunch of people came up with trehalose plus other stuff strategies for freeze-drying (freeze-drying mRNA non-vaccines has been around for a while now, maybe over a decade) vaccines to try to improve the availability of vaccines in parts of the world where maintaining a cold chain is dodgy. Last year! Wow.
Right at the moment, things are breaking _the right way_: it looks like humans develop lasting immunity to this thing, it looks like we are going to get one or more vaccines that can produce that immunity in a safe way, and it looks like we will be able to distribute that world wide (which is sooooo much harder, the more onerous the cold chain requirements are).
You do not need to tell me that bad news could happen at any point between this glimmer of green shoots and a tree giving us shade and food and wood for fire and building and wtf. We all know that. This is good news.
This is pretty exciting! Very small study, focused on safety. The mRNA vaccine produces an appropriate type and level of antibody response, so that is great, too. R. had the impression that mRNA required a pretty onerous cold chain. I poked around and was like, nope. Last year, a bunch of people came up with trehalose plus other stuff strategies for freeze-drying (freeze-drying mRNA non-vaccines has been around for a while now, maybe over a decade) vaccines to try to improve the availability of vaccines in parts of the world where maintaining a cold chain is dodgy. Last year! Wow.
Right at the moment, things are breaking _the right way_: it looks like humans develop lasting immunity to this thing, it looks like we are going to get one or more vaccines that can produce that immunity in a safe way, and it looks like we will be able to distribute that world wide (which is sooooo much harder, the more onerous the cold chain requirements are).
You do not need to tell me that bad news could happen at any point between this glimmer of green shoots and a tree giving us shade and food and wood for fire and building and wtf. We all know that. This is good news.