Thread by @s_r_constantin

I looked into this, because yay citizen science.

I could not find one research study using any of the peptides in the RADVAC white paper that found they inhibited SARS-CoV-2 infection in cells, let alone animals or humans.

https://twitter.com/Conaw/status/1357271240864456707

All those peptides come from in silico studies: “the computer said they ought to bind to various viral proteins.” Plus a lot of theory/mechanism argument.

You have the legal, and IMO, the moral, right to experiment on yourself. But I don’t think this is very likely to work.

Peptide vaccines *as a class* do have better evidence for effectiveness, and a peptide nasal spray vaccine *with a peptide not on the RADVAC list* did prevent COVID19 infection in ferrets. But that doesn’t imply much about whether THESE peptides will work or be safe.

“Peptide” just means “sequence of amino acids.”
Would you conclude that, because *some* lines of code can navigate a rocket to the moon, that *your* code is pretty likely to navigate a rocket to Mars?

I’m not coming from a preachy “trust the authorities” place. Lots of non-FDA-approved things have WAY stronger evidence than this. LSD may be illegal but we have tons of experiments in humans and animals and decades of use by the public documenting its effects and (low) risks.

“Take a random peptide that has never been tested on any living thing” is not at all the same thing as “take a well-known, well-studied recreational drug”, as far as risk goes.

There are epitopes to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that are found in actual convalescent patients, are associated with stronger immune responses, and neutralize the virus in vitro. nature.com/articles/s4146… Unless I'm misreading, these are *also* not on the RADVAC list.