SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

There are very few chimeric mice with humanized immune systems anywhere in the world, AFAIK. Two companies in US, currently locked in patent battles? Also they are very expensive to develop. But once they exist, they can pump out antibodies to whatever you make them sick with.

I can see that little sick chimeric mice run out of BSL containment would be a bad idea, but it probably won't happen because of their price. If you spent a million dollars on a mouse, I reckon you'd keep it on a short leash.

It would be many steps away to produce more antibodies to more diseases in this way. I don't know if it will happen.

My point was that such mice make gain of function research unnecessary. GoF (in this application) tweaks a virus that infects humans to also infect other species, so antibodies can be made by them. Or to develop other treatments or vaccines. Since many well-informed people consider GoF to be a really bad idea, alternatives ought to be considered to doing it.

A few well-informed people consider GoF to be good and necessary, so take it up with them at the complaints desk.

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Well, whatever. Given how fast COVID got sequenced and mRNA vaccines were developed (which require neither of the above, not even 'growing whole viruses by any means), I expect that path to predominate when the next hot zoonotic pops up.

Which does not mean that people will accept that vaccine, or avoid public emitting of virus until such time as adequate immunity coverage happens. Because people can be obstinate sometimes.

I'll take it up with the complaints desk.

 

@farmecologist , do you remember when hand sanitizers were all the rage? Masks are aerosol defense*. Where we still touch surfaces shared with less-informed mucus dribblers ...
Clean hands.

*(Imperfect, but whaddayagonnado?)

 

@Salamander_King is correct; there are many mice with some admixture of human genes and they are used for a wide range of biomedical research. I have been learning about these after having been smacked down by post #4170.

For production of COVID-19 monoclonal antibodies, Regeneron appears to be leading the way. its antibody cocktail most famous customer was Donald Trump. I have seen several pharmaceutical companies with familiar names, and other startups, that are developing antibodies with their own mouse models.

What I read about (some time ago) was Regeneron vs. Kymab legal battle over patent protection for Regeneron's particular mouse model. From that I formed an opinion that mice with humanized immune systems were rare, hot commodities, and hotly protected. Further reading today indicates that similar mice are widely used.

From:
Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Monoclonal Antibodies | COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines

"Two combination products, bamlanivimab plus etesevimab and casirivimab plus imdevimab, are available through Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs)"

The first named pair are from Lilly and second from Regeneron.

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So readers may take home messages:
Lots of mice
Lots of research
Two companies' MABs have EUAs
Others may follow

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I do not intend to mislead, and appreciate disagreements because they oblige me to work towards better understanding.

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However vaccines are developed and tested, they train human immune systems more or less effectively. But there are immunocompromised people, and late-stage infections where vaccines do not help. That would appear to be best situations for MABs.

 

Sticking my neck out once again. I wish to say that I cannot support Gain of Function research directed at making a virus (or bacteria or fungus or other pathogen) able to infect a non-human species, to aid development of treatments for humans. Different ways to aid development of treatments for humans must be sought.

Mice with humanized immune systems offer one alternative. Here the virus (etc.) are not upgraded. Seems like a good alternative to me.

I wish readers were as amazed as I am by the explosive growth of genomic sequencing, and its connections to 'expressed proteins'. Any potential zoonotic can be caught and 'unzipped', by blue-gloved researchers (braver than me!). From there and yet only very recently can mRNA blueprint vaccine be developed. If funding is available Seems like another good alternative to me.

For me it is simply a very good goal to widely train human immune systems for (against) the next zoonotic, whatever it may be. Alternatives to GoF research are appealing because GoF scares me right down to bone marrow.

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Anticipating zoonotics was the role of Ecosystem Health Alliance and its successor PREDICT. If they are shunned for apparent or imagined links to GoF, it would harm the human enterprise. This needs to be disentangled so that PREDICT's surveillance can continue and focus on genomics and do no GoF. Yet, to no one's surprise, I do not set policy.

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Global COVID-19 infections are now in about 20 million people and evolving towards better access to most who still have no protection. Certainly we hope this will resolve with less than 10 million dead (now <5 million). The biomedical community is all over it. The public is somewhat interested in shutting it down It will probably not be our 'resetting event'.

Always look beyond.

 

An incomplete accounting of historical pandemics:

Bubonic plague ~540 AD 12% humans died
Bubonic plague ~1350 AD 7% humans died
'Spanish' influenza ~1919 3% humans died
H1N1 influenza ~1957 1% humans died
AIDS 1981 till now 0.5% humans died
COVID-19 2019 till now 0.05% humans died