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Yep, my mum was given Thalidomide as part of her treatment for Myeloma. It is one of those things that a drug for one thing can be used for other purposes. She still had to sign a waiver that she wouldn't get pregnant because of its dangers though.

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2 hours ago, Herman said:

Yep, my mum was given Thalidomide as part of her treatment for Myeloma. It is one of those things that a drug for one thing can be used for other purposes. She still had to sign a waiver that she wouldn't get pregnant because of its dangers though.

Yes, it does sound odd but a friend of mine in Australia suffers from the same thing and is currently on thalidomide too but being male and in his 60’s they skipped the pregnancy waiver bit.

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13 minutes ago, ......and Smith must score. said:

Yes, it does sound odd but a friend of mine in Australia suffers from the same thing and is currently on thalidomide too but being male and in his 60’s they skipped the pregnancy waiver bit.

My mum was in her late 70s at the time so a couple of raised eyebrows and a bit of laughter.  But the way things are they have to cover their backs on everything.😀

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I am guessing that the PM and the scientists were referring to this vaccine. Looking more promising by the day even though they also said no guarantees.

'Great progress' made, says Vallance

More on the efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine. 

Sir Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser to the UK government, says there has been "great progress" in the search for a vaccine and the chance of creating one that works is getting "higher".

But he reiterates the PM's comment that this is not "guaranteed".

Prof Whitty says he is "very confident" a solution will be found.

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No real update this week from Jenner, but the news out tonight is tantalising. First of all we had this

Coronavirus jab could be ready 'as early as September' as UK leads way for cure

A vaccine to end the pandemic is just months away – and it will be created in Britain, claims TV doctor Michael Mosley.

The award-winning documentary-maker was given access to the top-security Porton Down laboratory where vaccines from two of our top universities are being tested.

Michael told the Sunday Mirror: “Everybody is moving ahead with the belief we’ll have a vaccine by the end of the year. The speed at which it’s happening is astonishing as vaccines normally take five to 10 years.”

Michael, 63, met Miles Carroll, deputy director of the National Infection Service at Public Health England, at the sprawling base in Salisbury, Wilts, for a BBC Horizon special.

That of course could have been just paper talk, and so could this next bit, however if it is correct that the U.K. government have confirmed this, then £93 million seems to be a lot of money to throw down the drain

£93m pledged for new vaccine-manufacturing centre

The Government is to invest £93 million to bring forward the opening of a new vaccine-manufacturing centre ready to begin production if a coronavirus vaccine is found. 

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Beis) said the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC) will now open in summer 2021 - 12 months earlier than planned. 

The not-for-profit facility - located on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxford - will have the capacity to produce enough doses for the entire UK population in as little as six months. 

A further £38 million is being invested in a rapid deployment facility which will be able to begin manufacturing at scale from the summer of this year if a vaccine becomes available before the new centre is complete.

I will wait to hear this tomorrow and I will update you if or when Jenner make a press announcement. I doubt wether BBC will pickup on this as it took them 4 weeks to find out about our 6 monkeys. 
Let’s all hope and carry on praying

Come On Sarah

 

 

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Good news, but Summer 2021 for that new facility? Doesn’t make it irrelevant to this pandemic response?

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I have a feeling Summer 2021 maybe a misprint as they also talk about mass production by the end of the year. It is correct however and not just paper talk. I will stand corrected but I thought the original plant was to be built by summer 2021. Like I said why throw £93 million at something plus the cost of creating 40 million vaccine doses if you are not at least pretty confident. I hope they know something they haven’t told us yet. Boris beginning to sound like Trump, ie if I have a vaccine I will be PM forever more. Here is the statement. 

It came as No 10 announced up to £93m to speed-up a new vaccine research lab.

The new fund will accelerate construction of the not-for-profit Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre in Oxfordshire so it can open a year earlier than planned, the government said.

Ministers hope the centre will be a "key component" of the UK's coronavirus vaccine programme.

Business Secretary Alok Sharma said: "Once a breakthrough is made, we need to be ready to manufacture a vaccine by the millions."

But Mr Johnson cautioned that, while the UK is "leading the global effort" to find a jab, "a vaccine might not come to fruition".

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5 hours ago, Surfer said:

Good news, but Summer 2021 for that new facility? Doesn’t make it irrelevant to this pandemic response?

Yes, I thought that too.

If that vaccine is developed and goes into production before the end of the year, am I being naive or will "the formula" not immediately be released to the rest of the world so all their production facilities can start producing it ? 

 

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4 minutes ago, Mark .Y. said:

Yes, I thought that too.

If that vaccine is developed and goes into production before the end of the year, am I being naive or will "the formula" not immediately be released to the rest of the world so all their production facilities can start producing it ? 

 

I think that’s a paper misprint. I think the original was to be ready by summer 2021 ( coinciding with the 12 - 18 months ) and now it is a year earlier. I also think if hospitals can be built in 2 weeks, 3 months for this should be possible. Don’t also forget that this is in addition to AstraZeneca who have pledged to start manufacturing once phase 1 results are printed. The government statement also says ‘ we need to be able to ramp up production once a breakthrough is made ‘ so that is somewhere between June and August.

MORE NEWS HOWEVER

It is now being reported Jenner have been given a further £23 million ( today’s Telegraph ) in addition to this to get ready for and then progress PHASE 2 where thousands more will be injected. Jenner are now confirming they should have their phase 1 results by mid June and hope to have the first 1 million doses ready by September. 
Like I said none of this quotes ‘ this is working ‘ and Boris is stressing no guarantees, but the tease is why throw, it’s now around £140 million at something unless it looks good.

If you are one of our London friends and nice and healthy don’t forget you can still volunteer. 
As soon as the next volunteer criteria comes out, and how to apply I will let you all know. Maybe we can have our own Pinkun I had the jab section.

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It’s wildly optimistic to think a mass vaccine will be available this year Well be back. It’s possible but these things normally take many years to develop and the government is repeatedly advising caution.

The global scientific world is working on trying to find a cure so in terms of cost £140m is small change. Britain will have spent hundreds of billions to try to combat the effects of coronavirus which puts sums of hundreds of millions for research into perspective.

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So reading the detail, the main vaccine production centre will open in summer 2021, but they’re also putting in £38m to have a rapid production facility ready to go this summer if a vaccine is ready by then.

 

This is all much quicker than usual, but given these unprecedented times I would hope it’s possible to ramp things up much more quickly. It’s a gamble to be getting these facilities ready before we even have the vaccine but a very sensible step.

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2 hours ago, It's Character Forming said:

So reading the detail, the main vaccine production centre will open in summer 2021, but they’re also putting in £38m to have a rapid production facility ready to go this summer if a vaccine is ready by then.

 

This is all much quicker than usual, but given these unprecedented times I would hope it’s possible to ramp things up much more quickly. It’s a gamble to be getting these facilities ready before we even have the vaccine but a very sensible step.

In addition AstraZeneca have also agreed to start producing the vaccine as soon as it moves to Phase 2 ( hopefully mid June ).

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The government have just confirmed that 30million doses will be ready by September, on the assumption it works. They just confirmed the trial is going well to date, but of course no guarantees.

If I just heard right he said the centre will be ready within 6 months, so maybe the mention of summer 2021 was out, but I stand to be corrected. However I will update as soon as Jenner Institute update all the latest news.

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Not great news, but still some hope for reducing symptoms.

 

"Doubts over Oxford vaccine as it fails to stop coronavirus in animal trials

Experts have warned that the vaccine may only be 'partially effective' after the results of a trial in rhesus macaques monkeys

BySarah Newey,  GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY REPORTER and Paul Nuki,  GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY EDITOR, LONDON18 May 2020 • 12:43pm

An earlier Chinese vaccine based on a modified version of the Covid virus so far appears more successful than Oxford's which is based on the common cold virus

The Oxford University vaccine, tipped as a “front runner” in the race to develop a coronavirus jab, does not stop the virus in monkeys and may only be partially effective, experts have warned.

A trial of the vaccine in rhesus macaque monkeys did not stop the animals from catching the virus and has raised questions about the vaccine’s likely human efficacy and ongoing development.

The vaccine, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is now undergoing human trials in Britain. The Government has brokered a deal between Oxford University and AstraZeneca, the drug company, to produce up to 30 million doses if it proves successful having ploughed £47m into the research.

“All of the vaccinated monkeys treated with the Oxford vaccine became infected when challenged as judged by recovery of virus genomic RNA from nasal secretions,” said Dr William Haseltine, a former Harvard Medical School professor who had a pivotal role in the development of early HIV/Aids treatments.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

“There was no difference in the amount of viral RNA detected from this site in the vaccinated monkeys as compared to the unvaccinated animals. Which is to say, all vaccinated animals were infected,” he wrote in an article on Forbes. 

Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, said that the vaccine data suggests that the jab may not be able to prevent the spread of the virus between infected individuals. 

“That viral loads in the noses of vaccinated and unvaccinated animals were identical is very significant. If the same happened in humans, vaccination would not stop spread,” he said. 

“I genuinely believe that this finding should warrant an urgent re-appraisal of the ongoing human trials of the ChAdOx1 vaccine.”

The trials investigated the immune response to the Oxford vaccine in rhesus macaque monkeys and were carried out at the National Institute of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in the US, with initial results published in a press release at the end of April. 

The results were said at the time to be encouraging. But publication of the full trial results last week shows the vaccine did not prevent the animals catching the virus, although there was evidence it may reduce the severity of the disease.

This is in contrast to a Chinese vaccine trial in April that did appear to stop the development of Covid-19 in monkeys. That trial, by Sinovac Biotech, a privately held Beijing-based company, used a modified version of the full Sars-Cov-2 virus in its vaccine, while the Oxford vaccine uses a common cold virus to try and provoke an immune response.  

In the Oxford monkey trial, six monkeys were infected with single doses of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and exposed to the coronavirus. A control group of three non-vaccinated monkeys were also infected. Both the immunised and non-immunised monkeys were then monitored for seven days for signs of developing Covid-19. 

One measure of infection is an increased breathing rate as the virus attacks the lungs - three of the vaccinated animals displayed this symptom. On autopsy, the researchers found the virus in the vaccinated monkey’s lungs.

On the up side, none of the vaccinated monkeys displayed pneumonia - which suggests that while not stopping the virus, it may be partially protective.

Dr Haseltine said this was “encouraging”, but that “experience with other vaccines tells us that is not a firm guarantee that such will be the case for humans.”

“It is crystal clear that the vaccine did not provide sterilizing immunity to the virus challenge, the gold standard for any vaccine. It may provide partial protection,” he said.

The doubts about the vaccine come after Alok Sharma, the Business Secretary, said that the speed at which Oxford was pushing ahead with development was “genuinely unprecedented” and that the first clinical trials were “progressing well”.

He also announced £84 million of additional funding to further accelerate the vaccine research at Oxford University and another UK vaccine candidate being developed by Imperial College. The following graphic shows how scientists are trying to produce a vaccine.

Separate funding was announced for a UK vaccine manufacturing capacity - the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre - in Oxford. This will be able to manufacture a range of vaccines depending on what works.

Despite the findings, there is still “cautious optimism” about the Oxford vaccine among some experts, after a separate study involving monkeys at the Oxford University saw monkeys administered with a single shot of the vaccine generate antibodies against the virus within 28 days. 

“The most important finding to me is the combination of considerable efficacy in terms of viral load and subsequent pneumonia, but no evidence of immune-enhanced disease,” said Stephen Evans, Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 

“It is encouraging to see these results and suggests cautious optimism for the Oxford vaccine trial being done in humans.”

Dr Penny Ward, a visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King's College London, added: “Single doses of the vaccine produced high quantities of neutralizing antibody in both species. 

“It is helpful to see that monkeys vaccinated with this Sars-CoV-2 vaccine did not have any evidence of enhanced lung pathology and that, despite some evidence of upper respiratory tract infection by Sars-Cov-2 after high viral load virus challenge, monkeys given the vaccine did not have any evidence of pneumonia.”

Edited by Van wink

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Epidemiological experts on this forum may know better than me but is it true that a vaccine has yet to be developed successfully for a virus?

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7 minutes ago, sonyc said:

Epidemiological experts on this forum may know better than me but is it true that a vaccine has yet to be developed successfully for a virus?

We have vaccinations for influenza which is a virus but which has to be changed each season, rubella etc. loads of succesfull vaccinations for viruses. There are some such a HIV where a successful vaccination has never been developed. I dont think a vaccine has ever been developed to deal with a corona virus, they never developed one against SARS as far as I am aware, but there has never been such a rapid response to genome sequencing previously and the huge investment in research as we have now with CV19.

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12 minutes ago, Van wink said:

We have vaccinations for influenza which is a virus but which has to be changed each season, rubella etc. loads of succesfull vaccinations for viruses. There are some such a HIV where a successful vaccination has never been developed. I dont think a vaccine has ever been developed to deal with a corona virus, they never developed one against SARS as far as I am aware, but there has never been such a rapid response to genome sequencing previously and the huge investment in research as we have now with CV19.

Thank. Yes, should have qualified that to a coronavirus. 

One thing now is that a global search is mobilised.

Whitty was very guarded wasn't he when he talked about a vaccine being developed in a hurry. 

Perhaps the Oxford research will still be seen as useful in treatment if not a cure.

 

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The above news is really not good. 

I'm  not sure that there is a huge amount of value in a vaccine that gives some protection only to individuals that are almost certain not to have developed the worst symptoms anyway and does little or  nothing to stop the spread.

Hopefully human tests will prove it to be more effective or that it offers a degree of protection to the most vulnerable on a 'better than nothing'  basis.

 

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Definitely not good news, but this is why vaccine development normally takes a long time - you test at each stage and take time to check the results before moving on to the next stage (each stage costs money).  We're not in normal times, probably most of the vaccines in testing won't work.

 

Also as @sonyc has pointed out, there's never been a vaccine developed for a coronavirus.  But, I am guessing this is because no-one has really tried before ?  E.g. with SARS, it was pretty easily contained in the Far East before too long, and I read somewhere that efforts to find a vaccine were shelved at that point.

 

I'd guess with Covid that we end up with an annual vaccine similar to flu where they have to update it every year and it's not always fully effective but it does stop the disease being so bad.

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On 24/04/2020 at 11:04, South Sider said:

The title of this thread is very misleading. This isn't what I expected.

I went to the club and had a wonderful time.

They played 'Jump Around' and we jumped around.

They played 'Sit Down' and we sat down.

They played 'Come on Eileen' and I got thrown out.

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It’s not all bad news. The Covid was found to be in the noses, but it protected each monkey from getting it move to their lungs, so you get like a cold instead of the bits that kill you.

As soon as this comes on Jenners website I will update, but this report coincidentally is in a report from the USA that is actually mainly talking about the new American vaccine that they are claiming works. 
Let’s keep praying

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Just to add Jenner have tweeted

Timely publication of the pre-print manuscript showing that the vaccine we are now trialling in people protects rhesus macaques: ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination prevents SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia in rhesus macaques #ATimeForJenner

so suspect they are not unhappy.

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1 hour ago, Well b back said:

It’s not all bad news. The Covid was found to be in the noses, but it protected each monkey from getting it move to their lungs, so you get like a cold instead of the bits that kill you.

As soon as this comes on Jenners website I will update, but this report coincidentally is in a report from the USA that is actually mainly talking about the new American vaccine that they are claiming works. 
Let’s keep praying

Well yes,  we are currently  in a situation where anything is better than nothing.

Big risk is that we turn symptomatic (yet unthreatened) isloators into asymptomatic spreaders. 

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Sarah Gilbert has said she believes the answer could be that the monkies were given such high doses. ( far more than you would get naturally ) that there would still be traces. 1000 people now injected ( don’t know if that includes the people that also got the other jab ) but they seem to think the next phase is on track.

Hope she’s right.

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Here’s is some positive news. Jenner in a tweet firstly said they were happy in the monkies that it protected. They also released the findings, that actually say it protected from pneumonia etc. Anyway here is their response which I find quite encouraging and I am not really sure why bbc, itv etc are not reporting this, rather than than the negatives. Reckon in their normal way they will have an exclusive on this in 2 weeks time. It is also worth noting that the government extra funding came after this was already known. The report that they refer to on 16/5 was published 1/5.

Efficacy of the Oxford COVID-19 Vaccine in Monkeys 

 

19 May 2020

 
 

We are writing in response to the article published on Forbes online on 16th May by William Haseltine relating to the BioRxiv preprint publication ‘ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination prevents SARSCoV-2 pneumonia in rhesus macaques' by van Doremalen et al (2020).

The article compares vaccine research carried out in rhesus macaques by Sinovac Biotech in Beijing, China and at NIH, USA for The Jenner Institute at Oxford University, UK. These are small studies designed to look at the safety of the vaccine before starting human clinical trials. Head-to-head comparison of these studies are difficult since they differ in some important areas.    

There are a number of key aspects of the studies where the conclusions drawn by the author are incorrect and misleading:    

• Valid comparisons of virus levels post-challenge in nasal secretions cannot be made: these data are currently not available from the Sinovac group, where there was no intranasal challenge. The challenge protocols used differed between the two studies, in particular the dose and route of challenge used. The NIH study exposed the upper and lower respiratory tract to SARS-CoV-2 at a higher combined dose. The Sinovac study exposed the lower respiratory tract only and at a lower dose.    

• Virus neutralisation assays are notoriously lab-specific so, to compare titres, the samples should be assessed side by side in the same lab. However, the high neutralisation titres measured in the Sinovac study are from after the live virus challenge rather than after immunisation. Both of these studies show clear promise, with high efficacy in each case against lung disease, and research on both vaccines should continue as planned. So, the headline result is that the both vaccines were able to provide clear protection against lower respiratory tract infection in the respective models.    

Whilst legitimate to try to ask questions about the relative efficacy of the two vaccines, drawing comparative conclusions about the studies is flawed given the differences in study design. To draw definitive conclusions, one would have to compare the two vaccines side by side under the same experimental conditions. In the end it is the impact on clinical disease that matters. Of course with similar safety and efficacy the single dose Oxford vaccine, now partnered with AstraZeneca, would be preferred to a three dose vaccine for cost, manufacturing and operational reasons.    

As we write the clinical trials of these vaccines continue and we will soon have results giving us a better indication of the safety and potential efficacy of Oxford vaccine. The world needs multiple vaccines and it is our hope that of the many vaccines in development at least some will show promising efficacy and rapidly move to late-stage trials and subsequent approval as soon as possible    

Sarah Gilbert1, Neeltje van Doremalen2, Tonya Villafana3, Teresa Lambe1, Andrew Pollard1, Adrian Hill1, Mene Pangalos3, Vincent Munster2. 1University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; 2Rocky Mountain Labs, Montana, USA; 3AstraZeneca BioPharmaceuticals R&D, Royston, UK.

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You could read that press release in two completely different ways and still be right :

"Great news, two vaccines now found to offer some protection against lower respiratory tract infections,  the type of infection associated with the worst outcomes. Scientists are optimistic that the vaccine could assist in preventing the spread of covid-19"

Or,

"Bad news, no evidence that the Beijing vaccine is any better at stopping the spread of covid-19 than that developed by oxford university.  In both cases trials in monies suggests that some protection from the worst outcomes might be offered but it is not clear from these initial studies that the most vulnerable will benefit at all.   More research is needed but there is still hope that the  results from strict testing protocol paint a gloomier picture than would naturally be the case."

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Unfortunately there is a very large amount of money riding on the outcome of these trials. It's not just about doing what is right for humanity, or the global economy for that matter. Certain companies and captive politicians have investments that will only pay off if the "right" vaccine "wins". So as always, take the "news" with a grain of salt. There is usually a lot more information available than the initial headlines and tweets reveal, often those are little more than stenography for a  political / commercial PR campaign. 

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22 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

Well yes,  we are currently  in a situation where anything is better than nothing.

Big risk is that we turn symptomatic (yet unthreatened) isloators into asymptomatic spreaders. 

Yep. Vaccinations are often given not in the expectation of preventing infection but reducing severity of clinical symptoms.

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