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How is the search for a vaccine for coronavirus



Scientists from 130 research laboratories around the world are working around the clock trying to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. The process requires strict control and careful checks: the vaccine will go to millions of people, and any mistake can become more fatal than the coronavirus itself. Therefore, the process, including testing, will take, according to various estimates, from 12 to 18 months. Already, the first vaccines are available, tests are carried out on people, and several dozen more options will work in the coming weeks. But everything is much more complicated than it might seem at first glance ...

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All vaccines work on the same principle. Scientists are trying to create something that looks like a pathogen. And “feed” is the patient’s immune system. Ideally, then the immune system will develop a response, remember the appearance of this pathogen. And next time, when something similar appears in a person, he will be able to effectively and quickly protect himself from infection, even without feeling anything. But it is important to do this carefully so that the person does not get sick from the vaccine itself. And since everyone has a different body, the task is not as simple as it might seem. A delicate balance must be maintained.



Vaccines from COVID-19 are champions. Never before has humanity developed drugs so fast. The virus was sequenced in January. And on March 15, the first tests began to take place in public. The process usually took several times longer, two months - incredibly fast. There are two reasons for this:

  • China was able to identify the virus as quickly as possible, isolate and sequence it;
  • sequencing technology has reached a new level.

If earlier vaccines were created from weakened or affected versions of the disease, now scientists have learned to use only certain sections of the virus. Which they produce inside genetically modified bacteria, in a nutrient medium. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Baylor College in Houston used this strategy to develop a vaccine for SARS, a disease that was also caused by coronavirus.

These same scientists have already created a vaccine against COVID-19. They are waiting for permission from the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) to start vaccine experiments on real people.



Other vaccines that are already being tested have skipped this step cunningly. The fact is that they do not save from the virus, but only from any one protein that is observed in it. They introduce into humans the smallest fragment of the genetic material COVID-19, which is used by the virus to infect cells. The idea is that this should be enough for the immune system to remember him, to recognize the coronavirus by this "identifier", and quickly start creating effective antibodies.

In theory, these antibodies should protect people from the real virus, or at least prepare the body for it, while guaranteed not to harm the person. In the United States, Moderna, a company from Boston, is working on this project. They started injecting patients with this “protein proto-vaccine” on March 15th. Inovia Pharmaceuticals from Pennsylvania is involved in a similar project. They started the first phase of testing in early April. On such news, the company’s shares have grown several times since February, plus millions of grants are actively pouring into it. Being a vaccine developer right now is a very responsible, but also very profitable job.

What are the problems with the vaccine?


If vaccines are already there, what’s the matter? Why do we need to wait at least another year?

The fact is that usually human tests have three phases. Checks have now started that everything is safe, this is phase number 1. Scientists only check if the vaccine will harm a person. This should be tested on different people, on different organisms, in different doses, in different conditions of people, and to track each week so that everything is normal. In the following phases, more people are needed, and they will already check whether the vaccine stops the development of coronavirus. Can she fight a real infection.



To collect statistics for each phase, to be sure of the results, it will take six months. And then - mass production of the vaccine may begin. It will also take time, starting from the creation of production chains capable of releasing this product. Given the scale (billions need the vaccine), dozens of new large factories built from scratch are needed. And even then, the creation and distribution of the right amount of vaccine can take more than a year.

And we skipped a few steps. For example, in the United States, for a vaccine to go into production, it must first be approved by the FDA. To do this, they collect and analyze all data from clinical trials. It usually takes another year. But since the situation is now critical, the US Department of Health has promised to make this process as quick as possible, and not take the time.

The main vaccinator of the planet, Bill Gates, also offered his help. He has vast experience in dealing with what would seem to be the most incurable diseases in Africa (malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, a number of parasitic infections, tuberculosis, polio). And he knows the importance of building infrastructure. Gates is going to spend billions of dollars to build the right plants to produce the 5-7 best vaccine candidates. In his own words, he knows that this, in essence, is "a waste of money." Some of these plants will eventually be irrelevant. Working vaccines will be much less. But his billions of dollars in investment will allow him to start the fight against coronavirus 3-5 weeks earlier, and potentially save several hundred thousand lives.



You will also probably have to conduct tests on healthy people - who are given a vaccine and then are infected with a coronavirus. But this raises ethical issues, especially because the disease is new, and we still do not know exactly all its features. Some people may have almost no symptoms, while others from the same category, even without bad habits and serious illnesses, can be fatal. What risk each of the tested people will be exposed is not yet predicted.

2019-nCoV belongs to the category of viruses showing the phenomenon of antibody-dependent increased infection. This means that a vaccine in theory can make immunized people more susceptible to serious forms of the disease. This happened with SARS vaccines in the mid 2000s. Some animals that tested the vaccine experienced even more serious syndromes than those who first encountered the virus. As with SARS, the worst cases of COVID-19 in young people are now associated with an overly strong immune system response. Therefore, you need to monitor patients who received the virus and make sure that the new vaccine does not have such a negative effect.

Another important point - we do not yet know how long the immunity lasts after recovering from the disease. The best data so far comes from researchers who have studied antibodies to SARS. And, apparently, the duration of immunity is up to three years. And we know that for other types of coronaviruses that are characteristic of people, immunity does not last forever. So it may be necessary to get vaccinated periodically. Take small-dose injections every few years so that the body does not forget how to deal with the threat.

Crowd protection


So far, the only plan to rid humanity of COVID-19 is to achieve collective immunity. But how to achieve it - by mass vaccination or by the expectation that all people will be ill with the infection, is still a question. In order for society to start living without fear again, the number of patients + the number of vaccinees should be at least 80-85% of the total population.

Such protection will be enough so that even if a new case of coronavirus is imported from somewhere outside, the spread of the disease is quickly stopped. The living shield of those immunized will not allow the threat to spread throughout society at the exponential pace that we are seeing now.



One of the options that is currently being discussed is the creation of temporary collective immunity. It is possible, and it will allow us to quickly go through the most dangerous phase. Instead of a full-fledged vaccine, in this case, you can give people plasma with antibodies from a person who has already passed through the coronavirus and was able to defeat him. These antibodies will prepare the patient’s immune system, and, in theory, will provide him with safety for a short period. For example, in Wuhan, the government calls on all who have been ill to actively donate their blood.

The plasma transfusion mechanism does not always work, and, for example, does not help with the fight against flu. So far, there is not enough information against COVID-19. April 6, a study was publisheddozens of doctors from China, according to which, in critical cases, their ten patients seemed to be recovering. But there they themselves say that an additional, deeper study of the issue is required.



In any case, the problem is that this will be a temporary effect. Such "external" antibodies will not serve the body forever, over time they will dissolve in the body (it would be good, after the peak of infection has passed). For immunity to last longer, a person must be able to produce the so-called B-cells , memory cells that can synthesize their own antibodies. And here one can not do without a vaccine or direct infection with the virus.

Blood plasma transfer - will work on the interval from a few days to 2-3 weeks. But a full-fledged immune defense with a working vaccine will last 70-300 times longer. Then the chances are that the virus will be able to find a new, antibody-free host.

Tests, tests!


Creating a vaccine is a very complicated, long and expensive business. But Russia can adopt another experience. Mass production of coronavirus tests. This is much simpler, and help can also be very significant.

The most striking example: South Korea. This country was to become one of the leaders in deaths from COVID-19. High population density. Proximity to China. Lack of preventive quarantine. The coronavirus began its spread here quite quickly and even before the whole world was afraid of it.



Korea went much faster than Italy and Spain, the number of infected in just a few days exceeded 6,000, mainly because of a woman who went to church with the disease. But now - the country is not even on the map of the epidemic; it is not in the top twenty. There are almost no new cases. After the explosionin late February and early March, the number of new cases here fell to almost zero. The number of active cases is also rapidly declining since mid-March. The country was able to meet and defeat the epidemic.

One of the main reasons? Thanks to the capacities of Samsung and other companies, South Korea created hundreds of thousands of tests in the first week. She was able to check who is sick and who is not. Who to isolate, where is the source, where to fight. Korea has already tested every tenth resident. And he continues to actively test, even when the epidemic declined.

The state was able to control the movement of the virus in its country, identify cases, send notifications to residents' smartphones if they live near the place where a new case has been identified. Rapid response technologies for the epidemic were developed several years ago when the country had to fight another coronavirus, MERS. More information about the lessons from South Korea is worth watching the video:



Now the creation of tests in different countries is slowed down by bureaucracy. This is health care, first you need a lot of confirmations and permits. Opening a new production is a whole procedure.

A good example is the United States. Now the country is leading in the number of tests, millions have already been tested here, 150-200 thousand tests a day are conducted . But it all started very late. The virus was already raging in the country, but this was not suspected. On March 16, several companies said they were ready to produce tests that could be done at home. But a few days later, the FDA issued a warning to such companies, saying that they must first be authorized and pass the tests. Otherwise - suddenly someone is just trying to get hold of hysteria?



But the problem eventually turns out to be serious. It takes time for symptoms to appear. It takes time to find out the test result. Therefore, those new cases that we see every day - they come with a rather large delay. These are not new infected people. These are people who became infected a week or 10 days ago. Due to insufficiently thorough testing, we do not know the real picture of the disease, we do not know its scale. One can only guess how many real cases are now in Russia.

There are serological tests for antibodies. They check the blood, and determine if you have had a COVID in the recent past. They do not help with active cases of the virus, new diseases, but they find your level of antibodies, and they can at least understand where the disease went.

In the United States last week, the FDA allowed the first such tests. The first authorized company, Cellx, manufactures them in China, and intends to deliver 100,000 tests in New York in one more week, where the disease has reached unprecedented proportions. At least 100 more companies and 70 independent laboratories are waiting for permission to begin mass production of their antibody tests. Just today, the US government announced that it plans to produce 20 million such tests per month, and is trying to speed up the process of their approval, as this will become one of the key aspects in the fight against coronavirus.

Stanford University is now collaborating with the U.S. Department of Health to provide serological tests to at least all hospital and hospital staff. So that doctors can at least know when they are already ill, and can return to work.

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