Following is a summary of current science news briefs.
Easier to produce COVID vaccine shows promise in trials; nasal spray vaccine booster works in mice
The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. New COVID-19 vaccine could be manufactured like flu shots
Scientists want Britain to back COVID patent waivers
Scientists on Friday called on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to support the waiver of intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments in the wake of the rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant. In a letter, also addressed to the British health, trade, business and foreign ministers, the scientists asked Johnson to support the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement.
Scientists amazed by blinking star's 'totally unexpected' behavior
Scientists have detected what appears to be an incredibly dense star behaving unlike anything else ever seen - and suspect it might be a type of exotic astrophysical object whose existence has until now been only hypothesized. The object, spotted using the Murchison Wide field Array telescope in outback Western Australia, unleashed huge bursts of energy roughly three times per hour when viewed from Earth during two months in 2018, Is Omicron nature’s way of curbing the pandemic? The variant has spread so efficiently and quickly, causing milder disease, that it has led many people to wonder: Is Omicron a vaccine of sorts? In the short time since the Omicron variant was identified in South Africa in November 2021, researchers have quickly learned that it has three unique characteristics: It spreads efficiently and quickly, it generally causes milder disease than previous variants, and it may confer strong protection against other variants such as Delta.
This has many people wondering whether Omicron could act as a vaccine of sorts, inoculating enough people to effectively bring about herd immunity – the threshold at which enough of the population is immune to the virus to stop its spread – and end the Covid-19 pandemic.
Omicron and vaccine
All vaccines work on the principle of training the immune system to fight against an infectious agent. Each vaccine, regardless of how it is made, exposes the human or animal host to the critical molecules used by the infectious agent – in this case, the SARS-CoV-2 virus – to gain entry into the host’s cells. Some vaccines expose the host only to select portions of the virus. For example, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines use a molecule called messenger RNA, or mRNA, to encode and produce a fragment of the “spike protein” – the knobby protrusion that is expressed on the outside of SARS-CoV-2 viruses – inside a person’s body. These spike proteins are the key way that the coronavirus invades cells, so the mRNA vaccines are designed to mimic that protein and trigger an immune response against it.
In contrast, some vaccines against other infections, such as chickenpox and measles, mumps and rubella, expose the host to a “live attenuated” form of the virus. These vaccines use small amounts of a weakened form of the live virus. They mimic a natural infection, trigger a strong immune response, and afford lasting resistance to infection.
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