plain_o_llama said:

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KidDoc said:

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BTW this is not the Moderna trial, different vaccine not mRNA based.

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Thanks for reminding people of that. Perhaps a new thread would have been a better place to avoid confusion.

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Pfizer is also an mRNA vaccine, and those look to be the two lead candidates in the US, at least based on the CDC guidance given to states to be ready to distribute. Could just be that AZ vaccine is more typical and doesn't need special prep.


As another note, unlike AZ's vaccine which is based on a virus, the mRNA vaccines can't lead to a viral infection that causes myelitis.

Interesting or maybe nothing but my 80 year old father in the Moderna phase 3 trial has said his arthritis is basically gone since his 2nd shot of the vaccine. Its been 7 days now.

He had fever and chills and body aches for a couple of days and has had a headache some since. My wife had the fever and chills for only a day and nothing else since which is much more common.

I get my 2nd shot Monday.

I think the Mnra vaccine has potential to be a gateway to new medicine that will help a lot of people.

PJYoung said:

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Interesting or maybe nothing but my 80 year old father in the Moderna phase 3 trial has said his arthritis is basically gone since his 2nd shot of the vaccine. Its been 7 days now.

He had fever and chills and body aches for a couple of days and has had a headache some since. My wife had the fever and chills for only a day and nothing else since which is much more common.

I get my 2nd shot Monday.

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I don't know if it is related, but I have wondered if there is a connection between arthritis symptoms getting better and the immune system having other things to deal with rather than attacking joints. Lots of people say bee stings help with arthritis as well.

They didn't completely skip animal studies. Things certainly moved very fast from animals to humans, but often the delays in clinical development are for business or logistical reasons not scientific ones.

mRNA (the Moderna approach) will not be integrate into your genome, nor will you be able to pass it on to your kids. In theory the Oxford vaccine could, but practically there is a zero percent chance of germline transmission.

As in any trial, patients are giving informed consent to participate. This does protect the companies from liability, but only if they follow all applicable regulations.

Thr author is either ignorant of the process or intentionally misleading people. The fact that Moderna hasn't gotten a product through the process isn't proof of failure as the author attempts to suggest. It is proof that the process is normally very long and any 10 year old start up isn't likely to have completed it yet.

I too have seen the BS about passing it on to offspring posted by friends on Facebook wondering if it was true. I answered in the same way. It is scientifically inaccurate and whoever started that nonsense is either ignorant of the biology involved or intentionally spreading fear.

I am just trying to provide information so you could evaluate those statements for yourself.

Pathogenic priming relates to the homology between human epitopes and viral epitopes. How it will effect a vaccine will depend significantly on which epitopes the vaccine presents. Skip the ones with human homologs and it is a non issue. I have no idea what parts of the viral proteins each vaccine candidate targets, so I can't speak to the likelihood of one vaccine having more or less of a problem with pathogenic priming than the others.

And they are clinical trials. If you are risk adverse, maybe don't participate in a clinical trial. It doesn't really matter if it is a new company with a new technology or a long established company with a long track record of success, because the company with a long track record of success will also have a long track record of things that failed somewhere along the way, including many failures in phase 3 trials. It is part of the challenge of pharma development.

BamaAggies said:

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I just wanted to voice some of the concerns I have, since someone asked. That being said, I realize they may not be everyone's concerns.

I agree with you and understand the timeline for vaccine development is very long. However, Moderna not having had 1 vaccine in Phase 3, ever, regardless of the reason, is still concerning to me. They have not proven they have the ability to develop a safe product. Can they? Maybe. Maybe not. That is a leap of faith I wouldn't want to take, but I completely understand if others aren't as concerned about this.

The information you took the time to post is really appreciated. It might be helpful to include a source, so the next time the discussion arises, I (and others) am able to point people to accurate information.

If someone is going to inject something into me, it does matter to me if they have had any success before. Otherwise, how do I know if they know what they are doing? You may not be able to undo any adverse effects. Does that mean that a company with a licensed vaccine can't make a mistake? No. Hopefully, they have learned from some mistakes over time. To me, the company with no success after 10 years has more risk. IMO

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Not sure what info you want sources for. The stuff about mRNA and DNA is in every college Biochemistry, Genetics, and Biology text book. Heck, judging from what my kid learned in HS that I didn't learn until college, it is probably in many HS biology text books as well. That is in no way meant to call people out for not knowing it. There are plenty of things covered in HS from subjects I didn't get a PhD in that I wouldn't remember.

One thing to consider is there are some shady people in this world. As often as you see a pump and dump scam where someone loads up on a companies stock, tells everyone how awesome it is, and then sells the stock when the price goes up, there are others who short a company, start negative rumors, and then cover their short when the company stock goes down. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/analyst/030102.asp Harder to do with a big company, but you can get some pretty wild swings with small companies like early stage pharma companies, early stage tech companies, etc. There was recently a hedge fund that took short positions in pharma companies and then filed patent infringement lawsuits against them to drive the stock down so they could profit. There is even a Harvard law paper on the practice. http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/Spier_966.PDF

It makes me very suspicious of the motivations of people who start rumors about these companies. Not accusing you or anyone else here of doing that as I believe y'all are honestly repeating information you have heard elsewhere. I've seen it before too. "articles" about "insider trading" at Moderna that go on to admit that there is no evidence of insider trading because the stock sales occurred after good news was made public and that is common amount companies at that stage of development for execs (and employees) to cash in when the stock goes up. BS Internet rumors meant to scare of test subjects or convince people to not to get vaccinated... certainly seems like someone is working hard to drive the stock of Moderna down.

BamaAggies said:

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BiochemAg97 said:

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Pathogenic priming relates to the homology between human epitopes and viral epitopes. How it will effect a vaccine will depend significantly on which epitopes the vaccine presents. Skip the ones with human homologs and it is a non issue. I have no idea what parts of the viral proteins each vaccine candidate targets, so I can't speak to the likelihood of one vaccine having more or less of a problem with pathogenic priming than the others.

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One last thing, I was hoping you could include information about this in your response. Just so I am clear, if there is pathogenic priming as mentioned in my original post from the 2020 study, what could that mean for some of the people choosing to participate in the studies today? From the second NIH study I posted above:

"Homology between human and viral proteins is an established factor in viral- or vaccine-induced autoimmunity. Failure of SARS and MERS vaccines in animal trials involved pathogenesis consistent with an immunological priming that could involve autoimmunity in lung tissues due to previous exposure to the SARS and MERS spike protein. Exposure pathogenesis to SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 likely will lead to similar outcomes."

"In SARS, a type of 'priming' of the immune system was observed during animal studies of SARS spike protein-based vaccines leading to increased morbidity and mortality in vaccinated animals who were subsequently exposed to wild SARS virus. The problem, highlighted in two studies, became obvious following post-vaccination challenge with the SARS virus [2]. found that recombinant SARS spike-protein-based vaccines not only failed to provide protection from SARS-CoV infection, but also that the mice experienced increased immunopathology with eosinophilic infiltrates in their lungs. Similarly [3], found that ferrets previously vaccinated against SARS-CoV also developed a strong inflammatory response in liver tissue (hepatitis). Both studies suspected a 'cellular immune response'.

These types of unfortunate outcomes are sometimes referred to as 'immune enhancement'; however, this nearly euphemistic phrase fails to convey the increased risk of illness and death due to prior exposure to the SARS spike protein. For this reason, I refer to the concept as 'pathogen priming'; the peptides with pathogenic potential therefore are referred to as 'putative pathogenic priming peptides'."

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There are risks with any vaccine (and also with the exposure to the virus). If the virus proteins look similar to human proteins, antibodies to those parts of the virus proteins could react to those human proteins. As an illustration, the virus spike protein binds to ACE2. A portion of the spike protein has to have a complementary shape to ACE2. ACE2 has a purpose, to cleave angiotensin. That means ACE2 must bind angiotensin. Which also means part of angiotensin has a complementary shape to ACE2, which could be very similar to the shape of part the spike protein. The immune system is supposed to work by eliminating antibodies that target the self, but sometimes that doesn't work and we get autoimmune diseases where the immune system attacks the body.

A few things here we learned from SARS. We know it is a potential issue. SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV2 proteins are nearly identical. From this, we should have a good idea which parts of SARS-CoV2 spike protein would cause a problem. Hopefully the vaccine developers took this into account when designing their vaccines. I don't know exactly which parts of the spike protein each vaccine is using (it should be proprietary information and not publicly available), but they have every motivation in the world to avoid the parts that lead to this problem in the past and focus instead on parts that are not similar to the human body, especially parts where antibodies from recovered SARS patients are known to bind.

This brings up a point about the acceleration of some of the vaccines. An effective SARS vaccine would have protected against COVID-19. We know that antibodies from SARS survivors bind to SARS-CoV2 spike protein. There were at least a few SARS vaccine candidates that got shelved because there was no way to complete clinical trials. If people aren't getting infected, you can't show protection by comparing the number of infected test subjects to the number of infected control subjects when both numbers are 0. These SARS vaccine candidates already completed animal trials, even phase 1 human trials. It wouldn't have been necessary to start over at the beginning. A quick concurrent animal trial and phase 1 to ensure the vaccine taken out of cold storage still behaves like it did before should get to phase 2 or 3 pretty quickly without excessive risks to the human test subjects.

The other risk is you only get a weak immune response from the vaccine and exposure to the virus triggers a runaway reaction (cytokine storm) when the immune system responds to the virus but not effectively enough to eliminate it. Phase 1 trials from Moderna, Oxford/AZ, Pfizer, and others showed immune responses (as measured by antibodies and T-cells) at least as strong as people who recovered from being hospitalized for COVID. that suggests the immune response is likely strong enough, but we still need to show in the phase 3 that it is effective at preventing people from getting the virus.

BamaAg is just throwing out every anti vax and pseudoscience theory out there. Props to you Biochem for debating him i just cannot muster the energy for that today.

I think the key point here is that we have NEVER had this amount of resources thrown at a vaccine effort. The normal path of drug development is completely out the window here, because there is zero constraint on money and manpower.

I'm not saying that will be 100% good, but there is just no way to compare this to the previous SARS or MERS efforts.

BamaAggies said:

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KidDoc said:

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BamaAg is just throwing out every anti vax and pseudoscience theory out there. Props to you Biochem for debating him i just cannot muster the energy for that today.

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What specifically did I say that is "anti-vax and pseudoscience theory" that makes you call me an anti-vaxxer? My family is 100% vaccinated. I never told anyone not to participate in the trials. I did say they may want to avoid Moderna because they have 0 products and due to their lack of ever having a vaccine in Phase 3, after 10 years, as stated in the article I posted.

This virus has caused pathogenic priming in previous National Institutes of Health studies. The NIH is pseudoscience? Are those studies invalid? Which part is the pseudoscience part? Since you are a doctor, please explain to us laypeople why that isn't cause for concern. Is this a common problem with vaccine studies? Which ones?

If people are going to choose to participate in a vaccine trial, I would think they may want to know if the animals died in previous studies. Again, all I said is that they may want to choose a company other than Moderna and not that they shouldn't participate in vaccine trials. Sounds like something an anti-vaxxer would say. Right?

Also, I would think doctors would want people to have information about the possibility of pathogenic priming and discuss what that means in order to make an informed decision. I guess I was wrong.

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The whole "mRNA vaccine will make genetic modifications that will be passed on to your children" was straight up antivax BS. To your credit, we got past that one pretty quick when basic biology was brought into the discussion.

I get the concern about "is this real" from people who just don't know/remember the biology. Saw the same thing with friends on Facebook who haven't seemed hard core antivax before.

BiochemAg97 said:

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The whole "mRNA vaccine will make genetic modifications that will be passed on to your children" was straight up antivax BS. To your credit, we got past that one pretty quick when basic biology was brought into the discussion.

I get the concern about "is this real" from people who just don't know/remember the biology. Saw the same thing with friends on Facebook who haven't seemed hard core antivax before.

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I really appreciate you taking the time to post so much information about the various things I posted. Not just being nice, I really mean it. One of the best things about this site is people who take the time to share knowledge and correct without being an a**. However, if you are going to quote me using quotes, I think you should actually quote what I said. It was more like: I heard this on some podcasts, hope they are wrong, and you should ask.

From what I understand, Moderna's vaccine is new technology. I didn't know if being passed from parent to child was part of that technology. Nothing to do with anti-vax because it could be a great thing if everything with that vaccine goes well. If it goes poorly in the trial phase, then it might be a problem. That is why I asked you for a source. I am happy to share your information with others. Those of us that have been out of school for decades don't always recall as much as we should.