Re:The end of the pandemic is near
by jfkvktnrnr on Wednesday May 26, 2021 @10:55AM
(#27291296)
Depends on the virus.
Coronavirus is an "easy" one to create a vaccine against. HIV would be the toughest one, regular approaches don't work, which is why we don't have a vaccine despite 30 years of trying.
For HIV you need a different approach, called "germ-line targetting", where instead of presenting the virus, you are trying to direct the evolution of antibody producing cells towards a specific kind which is able to produce working antibodies. If you just present the virus, you get useless antibodies.
So if we are hit by a "hard" virus like HIV, mRNA vaccines will be useless, since it takes years to figure out that germ line targeting.
Coronavirus is an "easy" one to create a vaccine against. HIV would be the toughest one, regular approaches don't work, which is why we don't have a vaccine despite 30 years of trying.
For HIV you need a different approach, called "germ-line targetting", where instead of presenting the virus, you are trying to direct the evolution of antibody producing cells towards a specific kind which is able to produce working antibodies. If you just present the virus, you get useless antibodies.
So if we are hit by a "hard" virus like HIV, mRNA vaccines will be useless, since it takes years to figure out that germ line targeting.