Thread by @DrEricDing

NEW—scientists at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research will soon announce that they have developed a vaccine that protects people from COVID-19 and all its variants, even #Omicron, called The ‘Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine’, or SpFN. 🧵
defenseone.com/technology/202…

2) The achievement is the result of almost two years of work. The lab received its first DNA sequencing of the COVID-19 virus in early 2020. Very early on, Walter Reed decided to focus on making a vaccine that would work against all of its potential variants.

3) Unlike existing vaccines, Walter Reed’s SpFN uses a soccer ball-shaped protein with 24 faces for its vaccine, which allows scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains on different faces of the protein. 👀

4) The vaccine’s human trials took longer than expected, he said, because the lab needed to test the vaccine on subjects who had neither been vaccinated nor previously infected with COVID. The rapid spread of the Delta and Omicron variants made that difficult.

5) “With Omicron, there's no way really to escape this virus. You're not going to be able to avoid it. So I think pretty soon either the whole world will be vaccinated or have been infected,” Modjarrad said.

6) The next step is seeing how the new pan-coronavirus vaccine interacts with people who were previously vaccinated or previously sick. Walter Reed will be hiring a yet-to-be-named industry partner for that wider rollout.

7) “We need to evaluate it in the real-world setting and try to understand how does the vaccine perform in much larger numbers of individuals who have already been vaccinated with something else…or already been sick”. The new vaccine will still need to undergo phase 2 & 3 trials

8) “We decided to take a look at the long game… and instead understand that viruses mutate, there will be variants that emerge, future viruses that may emerge in terms of new species. Our platform and approach will equip people to be prepared for that.”

9) MY TAKE—I’m hopeful but the study above only completed Phase 1. Many more phase 2 and 3 studies to go. So it’ll be still months away before we know more. But antibody and neutralization studies can hopefully be done by spring. Also the “nano particle” name could be improved.🤷🏻‍♂️

10) I’m also hopeful that because the vaccine was developed exclusively by the federal Walter Reed Army Medical Center (literally across the street from NIH) — we won’t have the IP fight like with Moderna. This is entirely US govt owned and be licensed for free—if they choose. 🤞🏼

11) I’m also REALLY PROUD of the @USArmy @WalterReedArmy for developing this. People often knock defense spending, but the DOD has huge budgets dedicated to biosecurity and bio defense. And their labs are bar none among the best.

12) So, I found the federal trial registry for this Walter Reed vaccine! It is a Phase 1 trial of 72 people in healthy adults ages 18-55… with either 2 doses or 3 doses:

📌2 dose regimen at days 1 and 181, or 📌3 dose regimen at days 1, 29, and 181.
clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04…

13) here are the 3 primary endpoints being tested by the Walter Reed SpFN vaccine… first two on its safety. Third endpoint on how it elicits humoral immune response….

14) here are 3 more “Secondary endpoints” being tested by the Walter Reed #SpFN vaccine: 1. Binding antibody response, 2. Neutralizing antibody response, and 3. Inhibition of ACE2 binding.

15) Actually, looking closer, the SpFN trial was conducted by Walter Reed in collaboration with the Henry Jackson Foundation for Military Medicine — which is a 501c3 nonprofit. I know friends there - I will ask if @HJFMilMed will commit to the IP being non-profit.

16) This new Walter Reed vaccine gives me hope: in early primate study: “SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein ferritin nanoparticle vaccine… elicits broad neutralizing antibody responses that **exceed those observed for other major vaccines**” 👀

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…