The vaccine innovation market keeps bringing good news, but it sometimes brings disappointments! Over the weekend, humanity lost two great hopes. One of them is New York University's abandonment of an experiment to adapt an ancient vaccine to become a vaccine against type 1 diabetes, and the other is the announcement of the failure of the only experimental vaccine for the virus (HIV), which causes acquired immune deficiency disease (AIDS). New York University had started an experiment to adapt the B vaccine. bad. g. The anti-bacterial that causes tuberculosis (pulmonary tuberculosis) to be a vaccine against type 1 diabetes. This ancient vaccine has been of interest to a number of groups, claiming that it can target Alzheimer's disease and a number of types of cancer. Finally, enthusiasts claimed that this vaccine, which was given to humans for the first time in 1924, could be used to combat Covid-19 and other respiratory diseases, claiming that it had a magical effect on the immune system. An extensive trial is underway to see the effect of the BCG vaccine on blood sugar in adults with type 1 diabetes. A similar experiment is nearing its end on pediatric volunteers at Boston General Hospital, Massachusetts, USA. 150 children were recruited as volunteers for the experiment in its apartment at New York University. The vaccine was given to 18 of them, provided that they were followed up over a period of 5 years, including 8 visits to check on the safety of the vaccine during the first year. New York University said that it decided to withdraw from the experiment, which was approved in December 2020, after reviewing more research related to the aforementioned vaccine. While Boston General Hospital scientists indicated that they are moving forward with the experiment, after it was confirmed to them that the (BCG) vaccine reduced the blood sugar level to the normal range in a number of adults with type 1 diabetes. Scientists say, commenting on New York University's decision to stop its trial, that such a decision is usually taken when there is evidence of vaccine safety risks. However, New York University did not point to any such risks. Others mentioned that there is a hypothesis that the BCG vaccine may have been causing the body's ability to produce white blood cells, which attack the body's own tissues, including the insulin-producing cells inside the pancreas. Scientific groups believe that although this vaccine is more than 100 years old, there are no longer rights that restrict its production; Any new vaccine that emerges from it will be prohibitively expensive. These groups pointed out that the drug teplizumab, which was approved after it was shown to be effective in delaying the onset of type 1 diabetes by a few years, would cost nearly $200,000 for a two-week supply.
As for the only experimental vaccine for AIDS, which was invented by the American pharmaceutical company, Johnson & Johnson, the company stated that it had decided to stop its experiment, even though it had reached an advanced stage. She added that she stopped the trial because the vaccine was not effective in preventing HIV infection. The vaccine is based on a copy of a dead virus, and is given in the form of injections 4 times during the year. The vaccine trial began in 2019, in more than 50 locations around the world, and among the trial volunteers are 3,900 homosexuals, who are considered the most vulnerable to HIV infection. Statistics for the year 2021 indicate that about 650,000 people died of AIDS in that year, while 1.5 million people joined the list of people infected with it. The World Health Organization says that several companies; Among them, Moderna, has vaccine candidates to combat AIDS, but only the experimental Johnson & Johnson vaccine has made progress in clinical trials. Scientists pointed out that this setback in the field of AIDS vaccine restores progress in research in this area from 3 to 5 years back. But specialized scientists said it is not the end, and that research will not stop. It is believed that the number of people infected with AIDS reaches about 40 million, 10 million of whom do not have access to any medicine.
On a related level, it was possible to monitor developments in the world of vaccines during the past week as follows:
• The Chinese pharmaceutical company, Sinopharm, announced that it had obtained the approval of the regulatory authorities to start clinical trials for its vaccine for Covid-19, which works with mRNA technology, and targets in particular the Omicron strain. The company said it had built a research and development platform near Shanghai, hoping to produce two billion doses of the expected vaccine. Sinopharm obtained an authorization to allow it to introduce the drug molnopiravir, which was produced by the American pharmaceutical company Merck, to treat Covid-19.
• The European Union's Medicines Agency stated, in a statement, that it had found no evidence that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine causes strokes. She explained that she had not obtained such evidence in any of the European Union countries. And the US Food and Drug Administration announced, last week, that one of the control systems reported the possibility of people over the age of 65 having a rare stroke after undergoing vaccination with the updated Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Pfizer said it had not been notified by a number of other monitoring systems of such risks.
• The US Food and Drug Administration is expected to issue a decision in May 2023 regarding a vaccine developed by the American company Pfizer to prevent infection with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) for immunizing adults. Pfizer said that advanced clinical trial data confirmed the vaccine's efficacy by up to 81.8%. And the two American pharmaceutical companies, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., announced that they had started an advanced stage of clinical trials on a vaccine produced by the first, and a cocktail of antibodies produced by the second, to prevent children from being infected with this virus.
XBB.1.5 controls 50% of America's hits
The US Centers for Disease Control and Control announced that the XBB.1.5 mutant now dominates half of the new coronavirus cases in the United States. The US centers indicated that this variant caused 49.1% of new infections there during the week ending January 21. The percentage did not exceed 37.2% during the preceding week. This mutant is the fastest spreading of the rest of the strains and mutants of the COVID-@DIGITS virus. Its existence was discovered last October. It is a descendant of the XBB mutant, and possesses the characteristics of two of the mutants of the Omicron lineage. And the Director of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tadros Gebresius, said last week: An outbreak of XBB.1.5 has been confirmed in more than 25 countries. Scientists do not know if this mutant will launch an epidemic attack that will return the global epidemic to square one. However, they maintain that the updated booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines provide sufficient protection against the possibilities of infection, hospitalization, and death.
on the other hand; Last week, a report by the World Health Organization stated that immunity resulting from recovery from infection with Covid-19, and from vaccination with anti-coronavirus vaccines, provides adequate protection that lasts at least a year. The organization referred to an extensive international study, which concluded that the combination of immunity resulting from previous infection and vaccination prevented more than 97% of the infected people from the risk of hypnosis and exacerbation of symptoms. She added that the stimulatory doses provide additional protection for a period of 6 months, while the immunity resulting from the previous infection alone provides 75% protection that lasts a year. Bloomberg indicated that advisors from outside the US Food and Drug Administration will meet on the 26th of this month to determine whether vaccination policies should be reviewed in light of the transformations that the global epidemic is going through.
Yassin Ahmed (London) @OKAZ_online
