https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/novavax-explainer-1.5897946
“It’s a protein subunit vaccine, meaning it uses nanoparticles of a lab-grown spike protein that mimics the natural spike protein on the surface of the novel coronavirus and which helps the virus bind to cells and cause infection.
When the particles are injected into the body with an adjuvant — a compound that enhances immune response — the body learns to recognize and fight off the virus.
Protein subunit vaccines don’t elicit as strong an immune response as whole virus vaccines, so they often include an adjuvant. Novavax uses a proprietary adjuvant called Matrix-M, which is based on a type of compound found in many plants called a saponin. The company says it boosts the body’s immune response and generates a bigger immune response with a lower dose.
The tried-and-true method of making a custom copy of a virus spike protein has been used to develop vaccines against HPV, hepatitis B and influenza.
The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, on the other hand, use a newer approach.
Both use messenger RNA (ribonucleic acid) technology, or mRNA, which the Centers for Disease Control says has been studied for more than a decade.
Those vaccines give genetic instructions to the cell on how to make a piece of the spike protein that is unique to the virus that causes COVID-19.”
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Regarding dosing of the COVID genetic vaccines (mRNA, recombinant adenovirus) versus the more traditional vaccines (including Novavax). There are some inconvenient truths here.
First, the current genetic vaccines (Sanofi, J&J, Pfizer, Moderna) did not undergo the time tested assessments of dose ranging and dose timing clinical studies, to the best of my knowledge. I have direct first person report of how the dose was selected for Moderna (confidential source), and it was basically a SWAG by committee consensus. Personally, for what it is worth, it is my opinion that the current mRNA vaccines selected a dose that was too high, too far up on the sigmoidal dose response curve – so that we may have excess adverse events. Dose selection with vaccines is usually about careful balancing of adverse events with potency/efficacy/effectiveness, with a bias towards safety.
Second big inconvenient truth is that the spike protein is the actual active agent, in terms of eliciting an immune response. And in the case of the traditional vaccines, the dose of spike protein is defined relatively precisely. With the genetic vaccines, it is not (to the best of my knowledge). I know of no data wherein the mean, median, range etc of total amount of spike protein produced in a patient after administration of the COVID genetic vaccine has been defined. Usually, the FDA is quite persnickety about such things, but I am not aware of this key variable having been determined. Therefore, the range and severety of adverse events potentially attributable to the level of expressed spike protein may reflect patient to patient differences in genetic transfer efficiency and subsequent spike expression. #Science #Data #honestyisthebestpolicy #Transparency #evidencebasedmedicine
Robert Malone, MD, MS (LION) on LinkedIn: #Science #Data #honestyisthebestpolicy | 50 comments
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