There have been several attempts at developing intranasal COVID-19 vaccines, all of them have had disappointing results so far (mostly that the immunity waned pretty quickly, if I remember correctly).
It would be far more convincing if the authors explicitly acknowledged that in the abstract, and gave a good reason why they think their approach is more promising.
The most interesting parts of this to me are the uncommon but generalizable techniques being used
1) the vaccine is delivered nasally
2) chitosan is used as the adjuvant
The two seem linked since chitosan seems to be developed in particular to be safer in the context of a nasal vaccine.
One understandable concern of vaccine opponents is the injection of mercury as a preservative. This has now been eliminated from most vaccines, but vaccines also usually use alum (aluminum), which is also concerning. [1] Chitosan might be a much safer alternative.
Sad part I remember back in the beginning of the pandemic people mentioning this: we needed intranasal vaccines to properly stomp transmission. Feels like the initial success of Pfizer and Moderna stopped this development
Because if all it took to make a vaccine for a respiratory disease was stick some peptides up your nose, we would havev a lot more vaccines (and i dont mean just for covid.).
Even if the other parts are harder (not sure if thats true. The reason proving things work is hard is because most initially promising candidates dont actually), it doesn't follow that every single vaccine candidate works.
This is really interesting. Obviously evidence in mice is a long way away from demonstrated safety & efficacy in humans but I'll be curious to see where this one goes. If non-healthcare-professionals could be trained to administer a nasal vaccine (the way many non-hcps are able to carry and administer nasal naloxone in case of opiate overdose), it seems like it might potentially make vaccine adoption faster or more widespread.
Based on my understanding of immunology I don't think this peptide nasal spray is very likely to be an effective vaccine. In order to actually trigger an immune response, the peptides would need to get taken up by cells and displayed on MHCs. I don't think simply spraying them into the nose will be good enough. It's an interesting idea but I think they should test it on animal models before dosing humans.
> nasal Covid-19 vaccine could be a reality in India soon with Bharat Biotech, the Indian vaccine maker, all set to start phase 1 and 2 trials of a nasal vaccine at Gillurkar Multi Speciality Hospital in Nagpur
I thing “soon” is still quite a ways, off at least many months for the general public. They are just starting Phase 1 and 2 trials. You also need a Phase 3 trial after that before it can be approved for the general public.
This is encouraging. It appears to work against the omicron variant.
We're currently using the first generation of vaccines. Consider those a minimum viable product. They mostly work, need to be stored cold, have short shelf lives, don't cover enough variants, and are injection drugs.
The next generation of the technology is in development. Some vaccines in test are nasal sprays.[1] Some are pills.[2] Some have broader coverage. There are over a hundred vaccine projects underway.[3] Some will succeed, some won't.
It's quite possible the biggest issue with the COVID vaccines we have is that intramuscular injection produces a blood-borne immune response but the method of infection is through the lungs, and you get much less response there.
It's why there's been a lot of interest in inhalable vaccines[1] although getting them to market has had a lot of delays.
I rather doubt snorting some peptides as described will do much. There are some attempts to make actual nasal covid vaccines and I think they use chimpanzee adenovirus vectors. Ie you get a virus that gives chips colds and add some covid bits on. See the Indian one for example https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-unders...
I think they also were talking of trying the AstraZenca one nasally which is also a modified chimp virus.
IIRC there is an intranasal expected to be approved mid next year. I can't find the source I read that in, so take the timing with a grain of salt. Another source I can't find at the moment mentioned questions about the duration of protection from that method of vaccination as well.
I would guess the push for intramuscular was driven for multiple reasons, the first being ease of development and the second to keep hospitalizations and death at a minimum.
I’m not an expert on this, but my guess would be: it’s logistically very difficult to produce the required number of doses. They’ve been gearing up all over the world to get ready. So, I would think that you really don’t want to spend those resources on a vaccine that’s either 1) not safe, or 2) not as effective as you thought it was.
True. There have been many COVID vaccines that worked in mice, but not as well in humans. The early coronavirus vaccines worked really well in orangutans, well enough to prevent other orangs in the same cage from getting sick.
There are at least 44 intra-nasal vaccines in pre-clinical development.[1] Something is probably going to work.
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