Hi everyone.
So I am in week three of self quarantining.
I'm here at home hanging out with this cute little potato, try and get some work done
and going a little crazy.
So I read in the news that a vaccine targeting SARS-CoV-2 was already in phase one clinical
trials, which sounded really good.
So I did a bit of research.
I found out that on average it takes about 10 years to develop a vaccine to the point
where it's ready for the general public.
So I would think we're moving a heck of a lot faster than normal.
A big reason for this super fast pace is that we have a history of being infected by coronaviruses.
Scientists came into this already knowing a lot about the structure and function of
coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2 in order to develop a vaccine.
It's important for scientists to understand how a virus infects us.
To understand it myself, I reached out to Dr. Benjamin Neuman, who has been studying
coronaviruses for decades.
And you were, just to clarify, you are part of the team that actually named the SARS-CoV-2
virus, right?
Not in charge of the team, but on the team.
Yeah, I joined back before it was cool.
Yeah.
I want my hipster creds.
Uh, all right, so the SARS coronavirus has a protein on the outside called the spike
protein.
The spike proteins stick off of the virus and search for cells to attach to.
and that is going to bump into the ACE2 on the outside of a lung cell.
ACE2 is a receptor on some of your lung cells and that spike protein will bind to it in
order for the virus to gain entry into your cells.
And then it's basically going to make the cell think it's time to eat.
So the cell is going to pull in the receptor and the virus, I tell my students that basically
it looks like fishing.
It throws out a little piece that looks like a hook that's called a fusion peptide and
the attaches to the cell and it's already hooked into the virus and then it reels that
in and just smacks the two together until the virus actually, yeah, has entered and
deposited the genome and the cell.
At that point, you're infected.
Once the RNA is in your cells, you're considered infected.
Even if you don't show any symptoms.
From there, what happens is the virus will replicate itself by hijacking things that
your cell normally uses, like enzymes and organelles, and so it just makes more and
more copies that will fill your cell until your cell explodes, releases those viruses
and they go on to infect more cells.
Now that you have an idea of what being infected by SARS-CoV-2 actually means, let's talk about
a vaccine because that would actually stop the infection from ever happening.
To develop a vaccine, you need to teach your immune system to recognize something unique
about the virus so that then it can destroy it.
The spike protein might be that thing.
I actually spoke with Daniel Wrapp.
He was the first author on the publication that came out in Science in mid February.
Yeah, the spike structure.
Yes, yes, I remember that name and that's a heck of a paper and that was pretty amazing.
Fast work.
Yeah.
We used a technique called cryogenic electron microscopy or cryoEM.
To look at individual spike proteins.
So that we could determine the three dimensional structure.
Based on that 3D structure.
Daniel and his team worked with a biotech company to create a vaccine.
The vaccine causes your body to make a bunch of that spike, so not the whole virus, just
the spike.
The idea is that if you're ever exposed to SARS-CoV-2 your body will recognize the spike
that's on it and then go ahead and destroy the entire virus.
Okay, so do you want to know something else that is super interesting?
The correct answer is yes.
You definitely do.
Daniel and his team discovered something else about the spike.
SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic right now is really similar
In structure to the original SARS-CoV, the one that caused the SARS epidemic in 2002,
2003.
But there are already over 100 times more cases of COVID-19 than there were SARS cases
back in the day.
Why is that?
Daniel and his team have an idea of what could be going on here.
What we did was we used a technique called surface plasmon resonance or SPR to measure
the binding affinity between ACE2 and spike.
Um, and based on our calculations, we're estimating it's about 10 fold higher binding affinity
between the receptor and this spike compared to SARS.
So this new version of the virus has a tenfold higher binding affinity, so you are more likely
to be infected by it, but you're also more likely to pass it on to other people.
So thanks to the knowledge that researchers already had about coronaviruses going into
this pandemic and the collaborative efforts of scientists like Daniel, things are moving
at a faster pace than normal.
And that means yes, we do have a vaccine that's already in phase one clinical trials, but
before we get ahead of ourselves, Daniel still predicts it'll take about 14 months for a
vaccine to be available to the public.
That's still really fast.
But remember, this is still phase one of the three phases of a clinical trial.
And this vaccine could fail at any of those phases.
So while these trials are going on, Daniel has collaborators and other scientists around
the world are still doing research to better understand that spike protein and to develop
vaccines that might be even better.
In other words, they are not putting all their eggs in that one clinical trial basket.
So in the meantime, protect those who can't self isolate and maybe just chill on your
couch.
Good girl Yuca, doing your part.