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Florian Krammer Profile picture
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22 Dec, 5 tweets, 2 min read
1) The biggest worry for vaccines about the new UK variant is the N501Y mutation in the receptor binding domain. This is also a mutation that appears when SARS-CoV-2 is mouse adapted. A paper looking at that found....
2)...that an experimental RBD-based vaccine still worked. I am not 100% sure the vaccine was based on N501, but I assume so. That would already be some good news. In general, I am not to worried about the impact of the new variant on vaccines. science.sciencemag.org/content/369/65…
3) The other thing to keep in mind is, that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines protected after one shot, when neutralizing antibodies were super low in the vaccinees, meaning that likely a low titer is sufficient for protection. Titers are very high after the second shot.....
4).....so even IF the new variant would have an impact and lower the neutralizing potential a few fold, there is likely still enough antibody there to provide protection. My 2 cents.
5) And @profvrr just alerted me about this excellent @PaulBieniasz paper: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… - at least the three human anti-RBD mAbs described here are not affected by N501Y

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More from @florian_krammer

Florian Krammer Profile picture
9 Nov
1) This morning, I shared an enthusiastic tweet about Pfizer's interim results with their COVID-19 vaccine. Let me explain here why am I am so enthusiastic, how the road to get this to people might look like and why we still need to control the pandemic NOW.
2) First, the results from the Phase III trial have to be seen in the context of pre-clinical, Phase I and Phase II trials. Preclinically, Pfizer shows the vaccine works in NHPs. Similar vaccines also worked. Also, in early clinical trials their vaccine induced good.....
3)....neutralizing antibody responses (that's what this vaccine does well). Now, in addition to that we get interim efficacy results that are in the 90% range. 90% is pretty good. It might even be higher. Could also be lower. But right now even a vaccine that affords.....
Read 16 tweets
Florian Krammer Profile picture
28 Sep
1) SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines - I promised a Tweetorial and here we go. This is going to be long and nerdy. But I'll make sure it is easy to understand. If you want more details, please just read this: nature.com/articles/s4158…
2) I'll try to give an overview of the process, the technologies, correlates of protection, the candidates, how they perform in non-human primates and what we know about their performance in humans so far.
3) Let's start with the process. Developing vaccines usually takes a long time. Usually there is a medical need and some idea of how to design the vaccine, often in an academic lab. Versions of the vaccine are tested in iterative processes, the constructs are optimized....
Read 138 tweets
Florian Krammer Profile picture
21 Jul
1) There is a lot of talk about decaying antibodies. I would like to walk you through a few findings about antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 that we put on medRxiv on Friday. Ill do this slowly over the day (while being in nonstop conference calls). But I feel this needs to get out there.
2) So, here is a link to that paper: medrxiv.org/content/10.110…. It is simple and pretty straight forward. Three figures only.
3) Before we start, two things: Acknowledgments and a primer in B-cell biology (a simple one):
Read 33 tweets
Florian Krammer Profile picture
26 Jun
1) A lot of people see cases rising while deaths are going down in the US. Somebody who did not like my tweet earlier about the record cases today just pointed that out to me (and also calling me 'dipsh**'). So, I wanna tell a little story about Iran.......
2) There are many reasons why the CFR might go down. We test more, we find more cases. There might be many more younger people infected while older people are more careful and stay at home. Management of COVID-19 got better. There might be several more reasons.....
3) But I would be a little careful. So, Iran experienced a 'second wave' recently. Actually, it wasn't a second wave because the first one never went away. But anyways, after falling case numbers they started to rise again. I was curious about that on Twitter......
Read 6 tweets
Florian Krammer Profile picture
6 Jun
1) Nipah virus is another virus to keep an eye on. It doesn't transmit between people well but it can to a certain degree, it has a high CFR and there are regular outbreaks. One vaccines is in clinical trials (funded by CEPI).
2) CEPI is funding clinical trials for vaccines against emerging viruses including Lassa, Nipah Marburg, MERS, Chikungunya, CCHF etc. CEPI is financed by Norway, Japan, Germany, the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. India is planning to contribute.
3) These CEPI-funded vaccines will potentially avoid future pandemics. The US is not contributing. Maybe tell you representatives that it would be a good idea to change that. cepi.net
Read 4 tweets
Florian Krammer Profile picture
25 May
@Docjoshsoc @angie_rasmussen 1) Titer matters. The lower respiratory tract is protected by IgG, the higher your serum IgG, the better. The upper respiratory tract is protected by IgA1, so having mucosal antibodies helps a lot too. High titers matter because they can stop the virus right....
@Docjoshsoc @angie_rasmussen 2) ....when it enters your body. Memory B cells are pretty useful too, but they first need to react and become plasmablasts. For fast acting viruses like influenza this mechanism might contribute to getting less sick, but will likely not prevent you from getting sick.......
@Docjoshsoc @angie_rasmussen 3) ....But since SARS-CoV-2 has a longer incubation period, the plasmablast response (generated from memory B cells) will maybe have a bigger impact. Plasmablasts kick usually in after 5-7 days, which is approximately the mean incubation time of SARS-CoV-2.....
Read 4 tweets

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