Chat message

Slack / Private Message Drop, p.331 [SLACK_000545] · slack_pm:msg:03486

Date: 2020-12-20 19:20
Type: chat message · slack
recipient: Kristian G. Andersen, Edward C. Holmes, Andrew Rambaut
speaker: Robert F. Garry

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Reading the Kai K article in Science and I think he gets it right. I agree with Sir Jeremy and comments above that this is an high alert event. With both 69/70 del and N501Y looking like neutralizing epitopes in domains importantenuff that the SAME mutations could plausibly also cause increased transmissibility [not to mention the P in the FCS] there is no reason to blow this off ala VR.

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2020-12-20 17:47 Robert F. Garry open

I think the people who have been doing the monoclonal antibody work need to start sharing their epitope data. Whatwe don't know is how many epitopes there are and which are protective. My guess based on the other class I viralgps (hiv, ebov, lasv) is there aren't that many protective epitopes. Knock out a few and you might not kill vaccine effectiveness altogether but effectiveness could take a pretty big hit. A 50% vaccine doesn't sound nearly as goodas the 90+ we're expecting at the moment.
2020-12-20 17:56 Robert F. Garry open

Another problem is that in vitro studies might rapidly identify a problem if the vaccinee plasma has reduced ability toneutralize. If vaccinee serum still neutralizes that's hopeful but still not out of the woods. At the point you wont really know if vaccinees are protected from the elephant until you fail to see infections in vaccinees.
2020-12-20 18:43 Robert F. Garry open

To Andrew's key point "Do folks understand that there are two separate concerns?" From what I gather the answer -at least at the moment - is no.
2020-12-20 18:58 Kristian G. Andersen open

Totally agree Bob - we have no idea which epitopes are protective and we don't know if e.g., the different vaccines cover the same epitopes. Given that the Oxford/AZN vaccine doesn't use stabilized spike (so stupid!) I assume that probably provides protection via only a handful of epitopes. Let's see what the experiments show - will be critical.
2020-12-20 19:20 Robert F. Garry

Reading the Kai K article in Science and I think he gets it right. I agree with Sir Jeremy and comments above that this is an high alert event. With both 69/70 del and N501Y looking like neutralizing epitopes in domains importantenuff that the SAME mutations could plausibly also cause increased transmissibility [not to mention the P in the FCS] there is no reason to blow this off ala VR.
2020-12-20 19:26 Robert F. Garry open

Knocking out two neutralizing epitope would not likely be a good thing for vaccine efficacy. Agree about Oxford/AZN- just begging for escape.
2020-12-20 19:47 Kristian G. Andersen open

I really hope it isn't that easy... We'll know soon enough. Massive-scale epitope mapping really needed.

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