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The world’s urgent wish is a vaccine to combat the existing risk of Covid-19, but possibly, despite everything, we could expand a vaccine against pan-coronavirus, said Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology at the University of Oxford in UK: Annual European Commission Study Event.
Professor Gupta speaking on a virtual panel at the European Research and Innovation Days on 22 September with other scientists to discuss how they are heading their border study spaces to deal with the demanding situations posed by the pandemic.
Professor Gupta said his paintings for more than 25 to 30 years, focused on a theory of pathogen evolution, especially those in various strains such as influenza, have placed his team in an intelligent position to examine the coronavirus.
His organization has developed models to better perceive coronavirus from the limited knowledge available, from its lethal nature (paintings that caught the attention in the UK in March for suggesting a decrease in infection mortality rates) to determining the threshold for collective immunity. Other people are likely to be emphed and what degrees of HIV positive, where antibodies appear in other people’s blood exposed to coronavirus, may reveal.
Your team is preparing lab tests to look for antibodies opposed to coronaviruses to examine how many others have been exposed to the virus and also whether other coronaviruses offer anti-virus coverage.
Professor Gupta’s paintings on the evolution of influenza antigens, ingredients that cause a reaction to the immune formula, have been the key to her paintings on coronaviruses. His team has developed a new vaccine covering a variety of strains by identifying influenza epitopes. , the component of antigens that adhere to molecules, with limited variability.
“It’s like saying the flu can have a lot of hats, but it has 4 T-shirts,” he said. Its generation has been legal to expand a universal influenza vaccine.
To use this analogy, coronaviruses have more costumes.
“Each type of coronavirus adheres to its own cloakroom,” Professor Gupta said. “You can’t afford it, like the flu, to say, ‘Well, I’ll wear the red shirt. He just can’t do that. ” That’s why it’s very helpful to (make) a vaccine.
“That’s why I have the feeling, I’m sure of myself, that we will produce a vaccine opposed to this virus because it will not change suddenly and replace and be antigenically very different. So, at this level, it looks a lot more like measles than the flu. “
Immunity
Unlike measles, lifetime immunity is unlikely. “With coronaviruses, you have a tendency to lose immunity and reinfly every 3 or 4 years,” Professor Gupta said.
With regard to epitopes of limited variability, the 4 lately flowing coronaviruses will most likely have not unusual “clothes,” Professor Gupta said. “Each coronavirus has its own wardrobe, but there are no unusual elements that percentage in your wardrobe. . “
Professor Gupta hopes that the pipe they have established can be used in the long term to make a coronavirus vaccine, she said. “This is something we’re really chasing. “
But he suggests that vaccine studies are probably more complicated in the future.
“I teach my academics that the vaccines we have are the culmination in the vaccine tree. This is where we were able to mimic herbal immunity,” Professor Gupta said. “And they are also the ones that induce very strong herbal immunity and long-lasting herbal immunity, such as measles, mumps and rubella. “
Given the brief immune reaction of coronavirus, he says we need a vaccine that provides enough immunity to prevent others from dying and helps the immune formula keep them alive in case of reinfection. “I think that’s the point. “
Driven by curiosity
The annual study event, which took place from 22 to 24 September, brings together scientists, policy makers, marketing specialists and members of the public and is based in Brussels, Belgium. The ERC panel, one of the two, offers the price of curiosity founded fundamental studies to respond to global challenges.
After the panel, Professor Balpreet Singh Ahluwalia of Norwegian Arctic University and an ERC fellow told Horizon that studies around the world were doing their part to combat the pandemic, but for him, the crisis shows how temporary exploratory studies are adapting to solve problems. . Such studies are more vital than ever, he says, and he hopes investments will not be cut.
“The search for borders does not prepare us for a problem. This prepares us for invisible problems,” he said, explaining that a request for studies will only be obvious in the future.
His studies focus on photonic chip nanoscopy; In other words, it works on super-resolution microscopes (capable of obtaining images of objects less than two hundred nm) while reducing cost.
Today’s super-resolution microscopes, the generation that won a Nobel Prize in 2014, can charge approximately 500,000 euros and must be housed in a special facility, while normal or fluorescent microscopes can symbolize around 200 nm and charge between 20,000 and . 50, 000, he told me. And that’s not enough for the coronavirus, which is around 150-200 nm.
When the pandemic occurred, he and researchers from Norway and Germany collaborated under an open access microscope that would be small enough to be used in a biosecurity cabinet to create photographs or videos of the coronavirus. They combined a laser-controlled printing microscope through a cellular device. phone with a photonic chip for a wonderful solution to create a nanoscope that costs around 1000 euros. Professor Ahluwalia said his microscope is now used through researchers in Germany and may only be used in diagnosis in the future. “(Coronavirus) wants to be treated globally, so a generation will have to have a value that can be affordable on a global scale. “
“Exploratory studies prepare us for a problem. This prepares us for invisible problems. “
Professor. Balpreet Singh Ahluwalia, Norwegian Arctic University
Looking for the blue sky
In an R-day panel
Ewine van Dishoeck, an astronomer and Kavli Prize winner, said studies are about delving into the unknown, and this technique is to educate young scientists to be independent and artistic thinkers.
“Today’s main challenges, from climate replacement to the pandemic, require us to step back and look at them at the point of systems,” he said. And basic discoveries and technologies are there to evolve through curious thinking in solutions, he said. , posing how WiFi, for example, was born from astronomy.
As science plays an increasingly visual role in our lives, Nobel laureate Sir Peter Ratcliffe needs to see the most compelling exploratory studies and allow the general public to better perceive how it works. For him, education is essential to foster clinical culture within society in giant to perceive how clinical wisdom is created and not to suspect it.
“I would like to see greater importance in history (lessons), in the training of history through science and in science (lessons), scientific training throughout history,” he said. “At this point, I think it would be much more persuasive for the general public through explaining . . . how wisdom will be used to create valuable new wisdom. I think that’s the ultimate vital point we want to make. »
European Research and Innovation Days