Researchers from Pritzker Molecular Engineering, under the guidance of Prof. Jeffrey Hubbell, demonstrated that their compound can eliminate the autoimmune response linked to multiple sclerosis. Researchers at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have developed
If we assume for a moment that it works as advertised - what is it that makes this a vaccine? To me it sounds like a cure or treatment.
The creators call it an inverse vaccine. A vaccine causes the immune system to recognize a compound to attack. This treatment causes the immune system to ignore a compound it had previously recognized. So they are specifically saying it’s not a vaccine (and OP is misrepresenting them), even though that word is in the phrase, something roughly like antivenom is not a venom.
Thanks for the additional clarification!
It is not a cure for the reasons others in this thread have stated. It doesn’t repair damage already done, it only prevents the disease from advancing. That’s still a huge deal, though.
But when it comes to type 1 diabetes the cause is the body destroying beta cells in the pancreas and everything else is a symptom of that. If you can make the body “forget” killing beta cells (like the article states the anti-vaccine would, or rather teach the body to not kill) then it would make sense for the body to recover and repair the damage done.
Wouldn’t it then be a cure?
Yes, from what I know about type 1 diabetes is that once your immune system stops destroying your beta-cells, they regenerate. So that would solve your type 1 diabetes. And you’d have as big a chance of type 2 diabetes as the next guy. And isn’t that the dream 🙂 So 🤞
@be_excellent_to_each_other @m3t00
Vaccines have evolved from prevention/mitigation to now include treatment, and ideally cures.
https://www.pennmedicine.org/mrna
So skimming through the link, it’s a vaccine because it’s still triggering a specific body response to fight the illness as opposed to directly attacking the illness itself? Is that a reasonable layman’s summary of why it’s called a vaccine?
(Old x’er here, Vaccines have been preventative for as long as I’ve ever known, that’s the reason for the question.)
The article says the immune system has a mechanism for teaching it not to attack every time there is a damaged cell via a process in the liver. They are saying they can take a protein, say myelin, and attach it to a sugar called pGal, and it will get ported to the liver where it will also get “trained” to not attack myelin. Then the immune system shouldn’t attack nerve fibers as in MS.
So I guess it qualifies as a vaccine as it is involved in training the immune system though in this case to NOT attack something.
@be_excellent_to_each_other @m3t00
I an X that had the exact same thoughts lol. I’m no expert, but old vaccines often contained some of the virus live or deactivated, whereas mRNA are created and not of biological origin. So more about the front end than the back end.
The amount of science research funded over COVID that allowed for the rapid development and testing of mRNA technology has created a boon for centuries to come. COVID may well be responsible for the death of autoimmune diseases.