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 Johnson & Johnson vaccine advancing through clinical trials
An experimental COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson produced
protective antibodies against the novel coronavirus in 90% of 805
volunteers by 29 days, and that increased to 100% by day 57,
according to data from an ongoing mid-stage study. Side effects such
as fever, muscle aches and injection site pain resolved quickly,
researchers reported on Wednesday in the New England Journal of
Medicine. To be approved by regulators, the J&J vaccine must show
efficacy as reflected by a lower risk of infections and severe
disease in study participants who receive it compared to those who
do not. Efficacy data from a large late-stage trial on the vaccine
is due by February. Experts expect the vaccine to show efficacy at
or above 80%, which would exceed the 50% benchmark for regulatory
approval but trail the roughly 95% achieved in trials of
already-authorized vaccines from Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc with
BioNTech SE. The J&J vaccine requires just a single dose, and it
does not have the cold storage requirements of the other vaccines.
The likelihood of good results "hopefully is very high," the New
Brunswick, New Jersey-based company's chief scientific officer Paul
Stoffels said this week. (https://bit.ly/2LpBhHm)
COVID-19 gives some immunity, and reinfections seen as rare
COVID-19 survivors are highly likely to have some immune protection
against the virus for at least five months, and reinfections in
recovered patients are rare, with only 44 cases found among 6,614
previously infected people, according to researchers leading a large
ongoing study of healthcare workers in Britain. But when people do
get COVID-19 a second time, they often have no symptoms, and so they
may still be able to carry the coronavirus in their nose and throat
and unwittingly pass it on, the researchers wrote in a report
published on Wednesday by Public Health England (PHE) ahead of peer
review. Experts have said people who contracted COVID-19 in the
pandemic's first wave may now be vulnerable to infection again. "We
now know that most of those who have had the virus, and developed
antibodies, are protected from reinfection, but this is not total
and we do not yet know how long protection lasts," said study leader
Susan Hopkins, senior medical adviser at PHE in London. "If you
believe you already had the disease and are protected, you can be
reassured it is highly unlikely you will develop severe infections.
But there is still a risk you could acquire an infection and
transmit (it) to others." (https://bit.ly/3ihkuBZ;
https://reut.rs/3ieWorA)
Coronavirus targets cells' energy engines
Researchers have discovered an important line of attack used by the
novel coronavirus: it targets an infected cell's mitochondria. These
tiny organelles not only generate the energy that powers a cell's
biochemical reactions, but they also play important roles in immune
function. "We knew that when the virus attacks cells, bad things
happen - but we didn't know why," said Dr. Pinchas Cohen of the
University of Southern California, whose team published its findings
this month in the journal Scientific Reports. "Now we can say, when
the virus attacks cells, it damages the mitochondria."
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 In test tube experiments, the
researchers found that the virus caused
"dramatic changes and impairment" in the genes
that regulate mitochondrial function, Cohen told
Reuters. The implication, Cohen said, is that
energy production in the cells and so-called
innate immunity - the body's first line of
defense against germs - are then impaired.
Another implication is that having healthy
mitochondria would help people combat the virus
if they do become infected. "We know that a
healthy diet and healthy lifestyle promote
mitochondrial health," Cohen said, whereas
mitochondrial function deteriorates with age and
with many chronic conditions including diabetes
and heart disease. In the future, Cohen added,
researchers may develop COVID-19 interventions
to help improve mitochondrial health. (https://go.nature.com/3bFlCyc)
'Nanobody' combos block coronavirus, even when
it mutates
Combining small antibodies called nanobodies
into single molecules to fight the novel
coronavirus may be more effective than targeting
it with conventional antibodies or single
nanobodies, according to a new study. These
"multivalent" nanobodies - containing multiple
nanobody building blocks - "are substantially
better in neutralizing viruses" and preventing
them from breaking into cells, study leaders
Florian Schmidt and Paul-Albert König of the
University of Bonn told Reuters. The fused
nanobodies "help each other so that the outcome
is better than just the sum of the two
responses." The nanobody constructs can target
multiple sites on the coronavirus, making it
harder for the pathogen to develop mutations
that render treatment ineffective, according to
a report published on Tuesday in the journal
Science. While the researchers saw plenty of
mutations that allowed the coronavirus to
"escape" the effect of a single nanobody, "we
did not find any escape mutants that were able
to replicate in the presence of those nanobodies
that target two different surfaces at the same
time," Schmidt and König said. A spin-off
company of the University of Bonn, called
DiosCURE, expects to start testing the combined
nanobody molecules in people later this year.
(https://bit.ly/3nOvXKH)
Open https://tmsnrt.rs/3a5EyDh in an external
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treatments in development.
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid and Kate Kelland;
Editing by Will Dunham)
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