53
votes
Accepted
Are the antibodies developed by differing vaccines still the same?
Due to the nature of the immune system, even people who receive the same vaccine will have a different set of antibodies.
Our immune systems generate a vast number of essentially random recognition ...
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38
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to make a vaccine against cancer?
It is not only possible, these vaccines are in active development. Biontech (the company which developed the Comirnaty Corona vaccine) was founded to develop vaccines against cancer, Moderna is ...
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15
votes
Accepted
Validity of report of reverse-transcription of Covid-19 vaccine mRNA in cultured human liver tumor-derived cells
Re: Intracellular Reverse Transcription of Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 In Vitro in Human Liver Cell Line by Alden et al. ( Curr. Issues Mol. Biol. 2022, 44(3), 1115-1126; https://...
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15
votes
Is it possible to make a vaccine against cancer?
Might not be the answer you're looking for, but there's already a vaccine for one particular type of cancer - cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is largely caused by a virus though (HPV, Human ...
- 537
15
votes
Do spike-protein-based vaccines undermine the DNA repair system?
Note: in the time since writing my answer, the paper in question has been retracted. Here's the text of the retraction notice provided by MDPI in collaboration with the authors:
The published article ...
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14
votes
Do spike-protein-based vaccines undermine the DNA repair system?
The authors explicitly suggest the first part of your question in their discussion section:
indicating that full–length spike–based vaccines may inhibit the recombination of V(D)J in B cells,
...
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13
votes
Accepted
Viral vector vaccines - why doesn't the viral vector get attacked by the innate immune system?
These Chimpanzee adenoviral vectors do not bypass the innate immune system at all. In fact they are used precisely because of their activation of the innate immune system, which then results in ...
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9
votes
Accepted
Is the covid-19 vaccine-induced copy of the protein spike also damaging cells?
The spike proteins expressed by cells that take up mRNA or ChAdOx vaccines are modified so they cannot induce membrane fusion. However, the research article you refer to indicates that circulating ...
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9
votes
Accepted
How many mRNA strands are in a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccines?
Well, we can work this out empirically.
We know that the average molecular mass of a base of a RNA is 339.5 g/mol.
Despite this, to calculate the approximate molecular mass of a single-stranded RNA ...
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7
votes
Safety of Covid-19 vaccine for pregnant women
The CDC has evaluated COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant people, and has determined that they are safe.
The main worry that they were addressing, however, was not either of your concerns (which do not ...
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6
votes
Accepted
Given a vaccine, can you deduce that a disease exists?
The main giveaway that it's designed to produce an immune response would be the presence of an immunological-adjuvant:
a substance that increases or modulates the immune response to a vaccine.
Now, ...
- 1,485
6
votes
Viral vector vaccines - why doesn't the viral vector get attacked by the innate immune system?
The innate immune system has many different components to it. If we consider a natural virus, like the base adenovirus used as a vector used in the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, then we can assume that ...
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6
votes
Accepted
Can the spike protein created by the Covid mRNA vaccines be created independently of the human body, and is there a higher cost to that?
What you describe, creating the spike protein independently and delivering it, is exactly what is done by subunit vaccines, such as the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Novavax.
As already noted in @...
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4
votes
Accepted
Understanding mRNA vaccine for COVID
You have it wrong. Coronaviruses are part of a family of viruses that are called "enveloped viruses". These all have an "envelope" comprised of a lipid layer derived from the host ...
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3
votes
Ingredients in Pfizer vaccine
The source for the linked article is this FDA factsheet, which gives the following description for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine (emphasis mine):
The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is ...
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3
votes
How long after taking a vaccine shot (Oxford–AstraZeneca) could an individual test negative for antibody (IgM)?
According to this paper, IgM antibodies can last until week 12 after infection by the SARS-CoV-2. Presumably, in case of vaccination, this time should be a lot shorter since the amounts of antigens ...
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3
votes
Is the covid-19 vaccine-induced copy of the protein spike also damaging cells?
Funny how only the Chinese financially sponsored this research you're talking about, despite the fact that the paper has some American co-authors. Anyway, it's the dose that makes the poison. This ...
- 3,052
3
votes
Accepted
CCTV cameras in Microbiology (Pathology) Laboratories
No - cameras would not capture the detail of the experiments being performed, nor would many of the experiments make sense without some context for the individual labels, if the camera could see them.
...
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3
votes
How do mRNA vaccines work with respect to presentation of the antigen?
MHC presentation of cleaved spike protein is only part of the picture; afterall, the immunity conferred by vaccines is largely owed to neutralizing antibodies produced by B-cells, which do not ...
- 17.6k
2
votes
How do mRNA vaccines work with respect to presentation of the antigen?
Your assumption is wrong. A mRNA vaccine only contains a mRNA for the protein against which you want to vaccinate, encapsulated in a lipid membrane. These membrane vesicle fuses with the membrane of ...
- 51.5k
1
vote
How do mRNA vaccines work with respect to presentation of the antigen?
How do mRNA vaccines work with respect to presentation of the antigen?
According to a DynaMed article, the egress mechanisms expected to play a role are 3:
(Note that this image may be somewhat ...
- 3,052
1
vote
Antibody detection - infection-induced vs vaccine-induced - is it common (or not) for a test to be positive for both?
Short answer: no.
Because all vaccines (that I know of) rely on protein or polysaccharide production in some form, whether "natural" (e.g. inactivated virion, subunit vaccines) or "...
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