News from US Project NextGen:
The 3 vaccines from the USA chosen for Project NextGen are:
- Gritstone Bio’s self-amplifying mRNA vaccine aiming to be “variant-proof”;
- Covi-Vac/CoviLiv: A live virus intranasal vaccine from Codagenix; and
- Castlevax viral vector intranasal vaccine, from a Mount Sinai Hospital spin-off.
Mucosal vaccines:
- Mucosal vaccines are currently authorized for use in 6 countries: China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Morocco, and Russia. There are 5 of these vaccines: China has 2, and one of them is authorized in 3 countries:
- Ad5-nCoV (Convidecia Air) Viral vector (adenovirus) vaccine by by CanSino (China)
- BBV154 (iNCOVACC) Viral vector (adenovirus) intranasal vaccine by Bharat Biotech (India), using ChAd-SARS-CoV-2-S by Washington University in St Louis
- DNS1-RBD (Pneucolin) viral vector intranasal vaccine, by Beijing Wantai BioPharm (China)
- Razi Cov Pars Protein subunit by Razi Vaccine & Serum Research Institute (Iran)
- 27 have reached clinical trial, with at least one of those has been discontinued.
- 6 mucosal vaccines have reached phase 3 trials, including the 5 authorized vaccines.
Since the global population has no chance of building herd immunity at this point because this virus spreads and mutates so quickly, I’m really hoping for the continued development of these variant-proof/resistant vaccines. But I’m doubtful we’ll get our “Polio Is Conquered” headline. If the Spanish Flu is anything to go by, we’ll just have to cross our fingers that the virus will eventually become seasonally episodic with predictable changes…
Really awesome that we’ll get to have two (three? eight? twelve?) deadly seasonal illnesses that people in the imperial core will continue to not get vaccinated for. Just let it rip in the global south.
Edit: I’m being facetious in that last paragraph. It’s a tragedy that medicine and public health are stymied by capital and borders.
In all of the variant-proof vaccines so far, still getting mild Covid was common (granted, variant-proof vaccines are not as far along as mucosal vaccines are, in terms of “next-gen” vaccine progress). Most likely, even once variant-proof vaccines are authorized/available, they will serve mainly as a backup, in case the current mucosal vaccine does not cover whatever variant of COVID you might get infected with. For the foreseeable future, mucosal vaccines will remain your best shot of not getting long COVID.
That’s good to know. I need to do more reading about the mucosal vaccines in general. I was under the impression that their efficacy wanes quickly. Maybe that’s old reporting or me misremembering. Crossing my fingers they become available soon.
In the case of Razi Cov Pars, the mucosal vaccine that has been out for the longest, it offers protection for up to 5 months. That’s an improvement on current mRNA vaccines, which protect against hospitalization for only 4 months (with protection peaking 1 month after you get it and declining from there). But “mucosal” really only describes the delivery route, different types of mucosal vaccines could be designed to be longer-lasting.
That’s one nice thing about variant-proof vaccines, we’ll probably need to take them once, or maybe once every couple of decades (if the Tonix variant-proof vaccine works out, at least).