
Vaccine experts say Moderna didn’t produce data critical to assessing vaccine - RyanShook
https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/19/vaccine-experts-say-moderna-didnt-produce-data-critical-to-assessing-covid-19-vaccine/
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jasonmar
It would be fantastic if Moderna can manufacture and deliver the mRNA into
human cells cost effectively and at scale.

Outside the cell, there are enzymes that cut up mRNA. So lipid nanoparticles
are used to protect the mRNA. But then even if this makes it into the cell,
the nanoparticle itself can be ejected by cell machinery.

If the mRNA can avoid ribonuclease long enough for the mRNA to be translated
into protein rather than being degraded, then it seems pretty straightforward
that the protein may be bound by MHC and make it to antigen presentation, T
cell activation, B cell activation and hopefully affinity maturation and
Memory B cells for the viral protein.

This paper explains some of the challenges:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6453548/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6453548/)

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jryb
i’m super foggy on the details, but in a talk a few months before the shutdown
the CSO from moderna said they add some sort of functional group to inhibit
degradation. i believe it was more complicated than just “ligate something
that endonucleases can’t bind” and there were interesting reasons why, but i
bet this information is available somewhere since the slides were made for
investors. again my memory is super unreliable but i was definitely wondering
how they got around that before she addressed it

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seibelj
My wife works in biotech in Cambridge Mass, and the rumor is that Moderna is
the next Theranos, and I heard this a couple years ago. So much so her PI
recommended she not take a job there after grad school. Zero products and a
thousand employees. This vaccine is also exceptionally good timing for their
next equity raise, along with the CEO aggressively selling his stock.

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RyanShook
My main concern is reading that there are no mRNA vaccines on the market but
this would be the first. Really want to believe and hope in this vaccine but
there are some red flags.

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djsumdog
Massive red flags. No mRNA vaccine has made it to human trials, and all
earlier attempts at vaccines for other coronaviruses (such as SARS/MERS) had
some pretty bad side-effects such as immune enhancement.

Generating antibodies is one thing, but there have been SARS1 vaccines that
generated antibodies and made the results worse:

[https://www.pnas.org/content/117/15/8218](https://www.pnas.org/content/117/15/8218)

Keep in mind we don't have vaccines for HIV or Herpes, but we do have
effective drug treatment. It's much more likely we'll see a compound or
procedure saving people from ARDS/Pneumonia than from a vaccine any time soon:

[https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-
hon...](https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-
honor#vacinations-should-not-be-made-in-a-year)

