sohamsankaran

We believe that we can scale up the process and bring the price down, so hopefully we can work with insurers and governments to make this possible, especially for patients who have no approved therapies available to them.

You could use it for in vivo CAR-T, for example, as well as for gene therapies.

That is the hope, but we'll have to see what the clinical immunogenicity results show!

I'm the founder of PopVax -- here's some context on this vaccine:

PVX-001 is a broadly-protective COVID-19 vaccine candidate intended to protect against new variants of SARS-CoV-2 even as the virus mutates. It is built on our RNA-encoded virus-like particle (VLP) architecture to elicit a broad & potent immune response.

Our lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulation, based on our own novel ionizable lipid PVXL-150, keeps the vaccine stable at 2-8 °C, regular refrigerator temperatures, for at least 9 months, rather than the -20 or -80 °C required by the first-generation mRNA vaccines approved for COVID-19. This will make it far easier to distribute the vaccine in developing countries.

The vaccine was largely funded by Vitalik Buterin's scientific investment fund Balvi -- in collaboration with them, we've made a commitment to making this vaccine open-source. Once the Phase I trial of PVX-001 concludes, we will open-source the design and manufacturing information needed for others to produce and build on it, and we will not enforce our intellectual property rights against anyone who uses it to make vaccines against any betacoronavirus -- the viral genus that includes SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV.

We are doing this because SARS-CoV-2 and its close cousins remain a substantial pandemic risk. In just the past few decades, they have caused one major epidemic (SARS), one close call (MERS), and one global pandemic that killed millions. The designs developed after the original SARS outbreak gave the first generation of COVID-19 vaccines a crucial head start in 2020. We want humanity to have an even better head start next time: a broadly-protective, refrigerator-stable vaccine that any scientist, vaccine producer, or member of the public, located anywhere, can improve, adapt to their needs, and manufacture without having to worry about IP.

From painful experience this is true, especially the parts Rachit wrote to personally call me out.

I'm one of the authors of this article -- happy to answer questions if anyone has any.

This is great! If you're not a Delta Chat user and someone tries to message you, can you receive and respond to it as an email?

Gandi has been my registrar for years -- they're solid, high-integrity folks. Hope they manage to resolve this without too much damage.