Good afternoon, readers.
As of July 28, there are 25 coronavirus vaccine candidates in clinical development, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). More than 100 others are in earlier-stage development.
Some of these treatments have received considerably more press than others. Pfizer, BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, and Moderna are in the latest stages of active clinical trials.
But the vaccine game is a tricky one. Developing an effective vaccine can take up to 10 years, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).
That timeline gets crunched when you’re dealing with a major pandemic, and regulatory agencies rip off some red tape to spur drug development. But that comes with its own tradeoffs. Is a vaccine actually effective? How powerful is it? How long does immunity last?
It turns out that most Americans are wary of those same issues. A Politico/Morning Consult poll of voters finds that more than 60% of surveyed respondents “think the U.S. Should fully test any coronavirus vaccine—even if that delays rolling it out and allows the virus to keep spreading in the meantime.”
Per the survey, results were fairly consistent across political and demographic lines on trying to get a vaccine to market as soon as possible without rigorous vetting (though there were differences on whether or not respondents would get vaccinated based on ideology).
Read on for the day’s news.
Sy Mukherjee
[email protected]
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
Michael J. Fox Foundation rewards groups for advanced Parkinson's imaging. The Michael J. Fox Foundation on Thursday announced the winners of the Ken Griffin Alpha-synuclein Imaging Competition meant to help Parkinson's patients. That's a mouthful, so allow me to explain. Griffin, the billionaire founder of investment firm Citadel, has a personal connection with Parkinson's disease due to his own father's diagnosis a few years ago. He spoke with me last year about his $10 million commitment for this particular project, which seeks to home in on a protein related to Parkinson's disease that's usually discovered after someone has already died, in living patients. That could help spur new Parkinson's drug development. "If we have the imaging capability to observe the pathology that arises from protein-misfolding in real time, and understand how drugs are impacting people in real time, that would be a major advance," Griffin told me. The first grantees will be AC Immune, Mass General Brigham, and Merck.
INDICATIONS
Plasma to fight a pathogen. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is close to deciding whether or not a so-called convalescent plasma treatment for COVID-19 may win emergency authorization. These are treatments that use blood plasma from patients who have recovered from COVID and formed antibodies in order to treat those with an active infection, a technique that's been used for other infectious diseases such as the flu. (Wall Street Journal)
THE BIG PICTURE
How to name a virus. Naming a pathogen may strike you as something that should be pretty low on scientists' priority lists right now. Guess what? A bunch of scientists agree! In one of the nerdier debates I've read about (and I read a lot of them), virologists are debating how important it is to set up a classification system for viruses since the current ones are disorganized. Consider it a tale of taxonomy. (Nature)
REQUIRED READING
The economy is no longer the top issue going into the election, by Nicole Goodkind
Health experts on how to run errands safely during the pandemic, by Brooke Henderson
U.S. GDP falls by a historic 32.9%, by Lance Lambert