Vaccines work, and will work against future pathogens (engineered and otherwise) but the way humanity currently takes them from design to deployment is vastly outdated and underpowered. Same true of antivirals. @radvacproject needs to be expanded, and tried in earnest at scale.

We have measured 47,851 neutralization titers of current human sera vs current influenza strains to inform vaccine update & analyses of viral evolution. New H1N1 strains (eg, D.3.1.1 + G155E) have reduced neutralization, as do some H3N2 subclade K descendants. biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…

I think @RADVACproject would help with this also. Special class on immuno-hacking and what it means in an age of high pandemic probability.

The Metascience Observatory (@MetascienceObs) has assembled a database w/ results from 8,307 replication experiments published in the scientific literature. We recently published a report on correlates of reproducibility. The results might surprise you. Link to full report ↓↓

PSA for Bay-area folks: @moreisdifferent will be hosting a Radvac table this Friday at @ManifoldMarkets’ “Night Market” at Lighthaven in Berkeley 7:30 - 10pm partiful.com/e/qGC3cELMeY7nL…

This paper is a goldmine on scientific self-experimentation. -14 Nobel Prizes have gone to self-experimenters. - Of 465 scientific self-experiments documented over a 203-year period, there have been 8 deaths. - The most recent recorded death from a self-experiment was in 1928, when Alexander Bogdanov injected himself with an incompatible blood type. - Many universities say that self-experimentation would require IRB approval because it violates "ethical norms for medical research," which is not true; the Nuremberg Principles make an explicit exception for people experimenting on themselves, and the Declaration of Helsinki just says the subject must consent. Also, "there is no law nor regulation identified that requires investigators experimenting on themselves to consult an ethics committee." - There are lots of recent self-experiments; "In 2014, Philip Kennedy had electrodes implanted into his speech center to further his research on direct brain interfaces. In 2016, Alex Zhavoronkov self tested drugs which his software algorithms identified as likely candidates."

Going to Effective Altruism Global London to spread the word about @RADVACproject's new initiatives. I'm also looking for funding and feedback on @MetascienceObs. If you want to chat, please reach out!

Is there an association between human herpesviruses (HHVs) reactivation and Long COVID? We analyzed HHV DNA shedding in saliva and found that HHV-6 correlates with Long COVID severity. Claire Laxton, @S_Tabachnikova, Lily Cooke, Kexin Wang et al. medrxiv.org/content/10.64898… (1/)

Modernizing Variolation substack.com/@prestonestep/n… by @PrestonWEstep

Since 2022 the Japanese have had access to Xocova, a once-daily SARS-CoV-2 antiviral that is superior to Paxlovid. It is even approved for prophylactic use in Japan. A critical upcoming FDA decision will determine the fate of this drug in the US. A lot hangs in the balance! 🧵⬇️

An experimental automated biolab in SF was just revealed ! Looks cool! Cloud labs like these will lower the barrier to doing potentially dangerous biology research, unless proper safeguards are designed & implemented. Just another reason @RADVACproject sees #biorisk increasing..

Agentic AI for drug discovery is here! 🚀🧪🧑‍🔬 The @RADVACproject is interested in any tech that can accelerate the design of peptide-based vaccines. I just applied for early access. The focus here is antibodies & peptides, but I'm sure agents for small molecules are coming soon..

Not all vaccines are created equal Some (like MMRV) actually do stop transmission - and do so for decades/life Other vaccines have weak if any protection against transmission and are shorter lived It has much more to do with the virus and how it replicates than the vaccine..

Do better. Vaccine access is essential for civilization.