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COVID-19 Virus Isolated at Sunnybrook Hospital in Canada


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1 hour ago, twangster said:

What does this mean?  Hopefully it's a significant milestone towards a vaccine.


From the article:
 

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A team of researchers from Sunnybrook, McMaster University(opens in a new window) and the University of Toronto(opens in a new window) has isolated severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the agent responsible for the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19.

Thanks to nimble collaboration, the team was able to culture the virus from two clinical specimens in a Level 3 containment facility.

The isolated virus will help researchers in Canada and across the world develop better diagnostic testing, treatments and vaccines, and gain a better understanding of SARS-CoV-2 biology, evolution and clinical shedding.

 

This is good news, I just applied for a job at Sunnybrook (non-medical position) ?

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2 hours ago, twangster said:

What does this mean?  Hopefully it's a significant milestone towards a vaccine.

 

This is strange since the CDC has been culturing SARS-CoV-2 for over a month to provide samples to the research community.  Isolating the virus is not new information.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/grows-virus-cell-culture.html

 

 

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Greffex, Inc. Completes COVID-19 Vaccine and Prepares for Testing

https://www.prweb.com/releases/greffex_inc_completes_covid_19_vaccine_and_prepares_for_testing/prweb16971219.htm

 

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Greffex, Inc., a leading genetic engineering company, revealed its completion of a Covid-19 vaccine and is ready to move on to animal testing as required by the U.S. government Food and Drug Administration.

 

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7 hours ago, Matt said:

That's... stunningly fast, if accurate. Of note, though, is this line:

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Greffex did not use a living or killed virus for its vaccine and instead used an adenovirus-based vector vaccine, which are genetically engineered.

Now, it's been a long time since I studied this stuff in college, but my recollection is that this kind of vaccine works by injecting a genetically modified virus (the adenovirus) that has been designed to produce some protein that's in the target (Covid-19) virus' outer shell; this is the only part of the virus an immune cell would come into contact with when the virus is outside of infected human cells, and the only part that could act as a trigger for immune response. For easy reference, here's the picture of the virus that everyone's been using in any article about it; obviously it's more of a conceptual picture, but the big red triangular bumps in this picture are likely the target protein being used as the marker.

New-Coronavirus-Disease-Officially-Named

But proteins are funny things. They change shape and fold differently depending on what other proteins are around them, and if the protein is made by itself with nothing else around it then it might have a different shape than what you see in the picture above. So this vaccine may work as intended, but we'll have to wait and see how the animal trials go. It could be that it just helps to make a later infection milder, similar to flu vaccine, rather than providing full immunity to the virus.

Even that would be an improvement, for sure, and I certainly hope it confers full immunity. But let's definitely wait and see whether the FDA makes another announcement of human trials commencing in another few months. Even fast-tracked, that's probably the fastest we'll see the FDA approve the start of human trials.

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23 hours ago, Zambia-Zaire said:

Interesting Note: 

Base on an estimated World Population of 7.5 Billion people.

.002% of the world population is infected with Covid19

.00008% has died from it.

Well @accio7 I know you was just reacting to my post; but, consider this as well.

According to the World Health Organization, 56 million people die each year(health, disease, murder, accident, old age, war, suicide, etc), which is an average of about 153,424 people each day...which is close to the total number of people said to be infected with Covid19.

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