Single vaccine could protect against all coughs, colds and flus

[reliablereason]

> It is given as a nasal spray and leaves white blood cells in our lungs – called macrophages – on "amber alert" and ready to jump into action no matter what infection tries to get in.

Right and if that is such a good thing why are those macrophages not always on alert. I smell longterm cancer or similar.

[bob001]

> I smell longterm cancer or similar.

Or simply autoimmune reactions which can be devastating.

[shiroiuma]

This reminds me of an episode in Star Trek: TNG's 2nd season, where Pulaski and Data visit a colony doing genetic engineering experiments on kids which created a super-virus.

[bsder]

It would be nice to have a dosage that lasts a couple of days for when you're flying or attending a conference.

That way, your immune system wouldn't be on continuous high alert, but you could give it an "Oy, wake up. Incoming pathogens." blast.

[LeoPanthera]

If only Stanford University had asked you first!

[gdevenyi]

Autoimmune disorders

[marcosdumay]

The most likely, because it consumes energy and respiratory diseases take almost nobody from the gene pool.

What has no relation at all to what possible side effects this could have.

[b65e8bee43c2ed0]

there are many, many things our bodies could do (or not do) to greatly improve our health at no cost whatsoever.

[amelius]

Or antimicrobial resistance.

[adam_gyroscope]

My favorite twitter account was “in mice” which just posted stories like this and added “in mice”. Which applies here.

[alephnerd]

It may come as a shock, but mice are some of the closest species to Humans genetically speaking [0] with 95-99% similarity depending on the gene in question, and a large portion of diseases are shared by both mice and humans [1].

One of the geneticists who worked on identifying this is also on HN and tried to explain this [2] but HNers think they are smarter than actual leaders in the fields of genomics.

[0] - https://www.mpg.de/10973923/why-do-scientists-investigate-mi...

[1] - https://www.mpg.de/8949327/structural-variants-crispr-cas

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41260651

[dragonwriter]

Actually, I think a more to-the-point addition for any headline of the form “X could do Y” is “, but probably not”.

It’s a relative of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.

[pvtmert]

I would be interested to see such thing on my Twitter/X feed, is it @_in_mice? It seems to be a bit stale. Would you like to share? Thanks!

[nkmnz]

We shouldn't call it a vaccine when, in fact, it's just a line of cocaine for macrophages.

[jalapenos]

PhageRage(tm)

[arghwhat]

We also shouldn't call it "vegan leather" when it is in fact just plastic.

Naming departs from technical accuracy when adopted by the masses, as they retrofit their common understanding. Wouldn't be too surprised if "vaccine" ends up covering other strong defense-boosters.

[rolph]

this isnt exactly a vaccine its more like prophylactic immunoinduction.

"toll like receptors"

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7173040/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135964462...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40364-022-00436-7

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll-like_receptor

[CyanLite2]

Isn't this how "I Am Legend" started?

[midnightdiesel]

I wonder how long before this gets defunded too?

[cdcluv]

Despite a lot of education, I don’t know the immune system well, because it’s complex.

However, it’s my understanding that when the body is in a state of readiness due to its infection (from a cold, flu, etc.) the effects of this (such as fever, inflammation, and general immune response) could potentially could guard the body against other types of infections that the body perhaps doesn’t have resistance to. So while I think a universal vaccine sounds great, I’d try it, and I’d want others I know that have dust allergies, etc. to try it, and because we’ve had friends and family die from the flu, I’m still a little suspicious that this could open the door for other types of disease we’ve not been having to deal with.

[ottah]

This sounds like a great way to create an autoimmune disease.

[Spivak]

That's a good chunk of immunotherapy, still super useful.

[hkt]

I'll be fascinated to see how this plays out for people with autoimmune conditions - generalised heightening of the immune system feels like it would be dangerous for those people. Are any immunologists lurking who might be able to speculate?

[PaulKeeble]

Its often completely normal to use healthy controls in a trial like this, healthy people not getting ill is your target audience and the long term stage 3 will be against healthy people. So many drugs are not tested against obvious groups that might produce a poor result to make the findings as strong as possible but it means in a lot of cases chronically ill people are making judgements on no data at all.

[senkora]

It seems like it could also be quite dangerous for those with food allergies.

[linhns]

Nice to hear but I'm afraid this will end up like generic solutions, good but not fully effective for single diseases.

[bobomonkey]

Even if it worked perfectly, I would be worried that an unexercised immune system would turn on me.

[scotty79]

Macrophages are trash eaters. Keeping them active might even be beneficial for other reasons.

[botusaurus]

why do they call it a vaccine, its nothing like that...

there's probably a reason evolution didnt put the immune system on permanent "amber alert" as they call it in the article

[amelius]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_alert

Amber alert means something different than the author thinks ...

[Angostura]

> The research team in the US does not think the immune system should be permanently dialled up and think such a vaccine should be used to compliment rather than replace current vaccines

[kojacklives]

True though there is the theory that it was unnecessary for the immune system to regulate itself in some ways because we were full of parasites.

[mattmaroon]

Isn’t Amber alert a missing child? Wouldn’t you say like DEFCON three or something?

[giarc]

>The effect lasted for around three months in animal experiments.

It would just be temporary, but there is likely trade offs.

[renewiltord]

One of the things I do worry about is glasses. Is there a reason why we correct vision? There's probably a reason evolution made some of us see the world in a blur. Likewise with therapy - maybe killing yourself is like cell apoptosis. Many body cells are supposed to choose to die when they no longer function well. It's a good thing. That's often the problem with scientists: "They were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should".

Until we find out why nature made it so some of us kill ourselves maybe we shouldn't fuck with it? Remember Chesterton's Fence.

[Larrikin]

Are you wildly speculating or do you have a source with research backing up your claim evolution got it perfectly right?

I personally look forward to every innovation that potentially improves our baseline.

[grigio]

is this a new series?

[jdauriemma]

This team is at Stanford, unless I’m reading the article incorrectly. Still awful that the US pulled out of WHO.