Yes, I originally planned to include a small section about Stöcker, but it seemed only tangentially related to the project itself and fuel for extensive political discussions.
tldr for the unintiated: Stöcker is the founder of Euroimmun, a company that makes lab chemicals and also happens to make Covid antibody tests. Through his contacts, he managed to get his hands on the spike protein DNA early and made his own recombinant vaccine candidate. He also gave this to several dozen volunteers and lab employees, which he argues falls under a loophole that allows doctors to use unlicensed medicine if no proper treatment exists. The PEI, a German medical regulatory body, however argues that this constitutes an unlicensed medical trial. He is AFAIK still facing a lawsuit, but is nonetheless occasionally vaccinating volunteers until the local police make him stop.
He was always somewhat nutty when it came to politics, though, and has gotten significantly worse during the pandemic, even reblogging “fan mail” about Bill Gates Covid Vaccine conspiracies, so I’m not sure how much faith I have in his data. It’s another argument in favor of at least testing subunit vaccines, though, since his writing about the economics of protein production (i.e. supplying Germany many times over within months) is perfectly credible.
Another OT but curious side note: His audience appears to be predominantly anti-vax when it comes to the licensed vaccines yet extremely willing to take his vaccine candidate. This surprised me—sure, I had always assumed that a large aspect of conspiracy communities is opposing anything supported by the government, but not that the specifics really don’t matter at all. Stöcker’s vaccine has all the (faux) pitfalls the anti-vax community raves against—aluminum, untested, GMO, made with embryonic cells—yet none of this matters in the slightest as long as he’s fighting The Man. Might make for an interesting post in its own right.
And yes, I took the vaccine IM with no noticeable side effects.
I see, thanks for doing this. I have been really interested in self-vaccination since the original RADVAC whitepaper came out, but I never really pulled the trigger on any method due to a lack of expertise in the area and (expected) expressions of concern from some people close to me.
A few more Q’s:
It does seem like doing the purification step may require or at least benefit from some level of lab experience, which I unfortunately don’t have. How important do you think the purification step is for the safety of the final product (as taken IM)? If it really shouldn’t be skipped, I may be better off with RADVAC.
I notice that a lot of RBD are sold with “(His-Tag)” at the back. Based on some cursory reading, it seems that this is for the purposes of making purification easier. But does this tag have to be removed to be used in a vaccine? Some comments on ResearchGate suggest the answer is no but I’m really not sure.
Secondly since it does seem like people who have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, a vaccine, or even SARS-CoV-1 mount a stronger response when later given another vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, do you think that it might be possible that dosing the DIY one again (but say, with an Omicron RBD) after getting the commercial vaccines could demonstrate the efficacy of the DIY one if the titer from a commercial antibody test increases after injecting it?
Purification isn’t necessary if you buy already purified protein; in my case it was just cheaper to get it in bulk and filter it myself.
Removing the his-tag reduces the low-ish risk of it interfering with the immune response, but not doing so doesn’t strike me as dangerous, it’s just a dangling chain of histidine after all (and biology doesn’t quite work like Unsong, luckily).
As for using peptide vaccines as a booster, I’m mildly optimistic given the evidence. Boosting vector vaccines with mRNA seems stronger than vice-versa, but it’s still better than only having n-1 vaccines. I could see the same being true for peptide vaccines.
FWIW, my first official and fourth overall vaccination pretty much knocked me out for two days, so perhaps my experiment wasn’t entirely without effect.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. When you say purified protein, what’s the standard for “pure enough”? I see some listings that say things like “>95% by SDS-PAGE”.
Stöcker is the founder of Euroimmun, a company that makes lab chemicals and also happens to make Covid antibody tests. Through his contacts, he managed to get his hands on the spike protein DNA early and made his own recombinant vaccine candidate.
To be exact, part of creating the Covid antibody tests was creating the spike protein domains so his company was already creating those for reasons unrelated to making the vaccine.
That side note is interesting and seems worth expanding on. Would seem to suggest that people aren’t so much distrustful of vaccines and medicine as they are distrustful of anything the government wants to stick in their arm for free with penalties for non-compliance. That might even be a reasonable heuristic if it wasn’t the start and end of any reasoning done.
It would also suggest that the way to get the last stuborn 10%/20%/30% of the population vaccinated is to have someone loudly critical of the government make and promote a different vaccine (maybe license and rebrand one from a different not too friendly country), then make people pay for it. Bonus points if the establishment is seen objecting that you shouldn’t go pay for that vaccine when the govt has perfectly good free ones.
Yes, I originally planned to include a small section about Stöcker, but it seemed only tangentially related to the project itself and fuel for extensive political discussions.
tldr for the unintiated: Stöcker is the founder of Euroimmun, a company that makes lab chemicals and also happens to make Covid antibody tests. Through his contacts, he managed to get his hands on the spike protein DNA early and made his own recombinant vaccine candidate. He also gave this to several dozen volunteers and lab employees, which he argues falls under a loophole that allows doctors to use unlicensed medicine if no proper treatment exists. The PEI, a German medical regulatory body, however argues that this constitutes an unlicensed medical trial. He is AFAIK still facing a lawsuit, but is nonetheless occasionally vaccinating volunteers until the local police make him stop.
He was always somewhat nutty when it came to politics, though, and has gotten significantly worse during the pandemic, even reblogging “fan mail” about Bill Gates Covid Vaccine conspiracies, so I’m not sure how much faith I have in his data. It’s another argument in favor of at least testing subunit vaccines, though, since his writing about the economics of protein production (i.e. supplying Germany many times over within months) is perfectly credible.
Another OT but curious side note: His audience appears to be predominantly anti-vax when it comes to the licensed vaccines yet extremely willing to take his vaccine candidate. This surprised me—sure, I had always assumed that a large aspect of conspiracy communities is opposing anything supported by the government, but not that the specifics really don’t matter at all. Stöcker’s vaccine has all the (faux) pitfalls the anti-vax community raves against—aluminum, untested, GMO, made with embryonic cells—yet none of this matters in the slightest as long as he’s fighting The Man. Might make for an interesting post in its own right.
And yes, I took the vaccine IM with no noticeable side effects.
I see, thanks for doing this. I have been really interested in self-vaccination since the original RADVAC whitepaper came out, but I never really pulled the trigger on any method due to a lack of expertise in the area and (expected) expressions of concern from some people close to me.
A few more Q’s:
It does seem like doing the purification step may require or at least benefit from some level of lab experience, which I unfortunately don’t have. How important do you think the purification step is for the safety of the final product (as taken IM)? If it really shouldn’t be skipped, I may be better off with RADVAC.
I notice that a lot of RBD are sold with “(His-Tag)” at the back. Based on some cursory reading, it seems that this is for the purposes of making purification easier. But does this tag have to be removed to be used in a vaccine? Some comments on ResearchGate suggest the answer is no but I’m really not sure.
Secondly since it does seem like people who have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, a vaccine, or even SARS-CoV-1 mount a stronger response when later given another vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, do you think that it might be possible that dosing the DIY one again (but say, with an Omicron RBD) after getting the commercial vaccines could demonstrate the efficacy of the DIY one if the titer from a commercial antibody test increases after injecting it?
Purification isn’t necessary if you buy already purified protein; in my case it was just cheaper to get it in bulk and filter it myself.
Removing the his-tag reduces the low-ish risk of it interfering with the immune response, but not doing so doesn’t strike me as dangerous, it’s just a dangling chain of histidine after all (and biology doesn’t quite work like Unsong, luckily).
As for using peptide vaccines as a booster, I’m mildly optimistic given the evidence. Boosting vector vaccines with mRNA seems stronger than vice-versa, but it’s still better than only having n-1 vaccines. I could see the same being true for peptide vaccines.
FWIW, my first official and fourth overall vaccination pretty much knocked me out for two days, so perhaps my experiment wasn’t entirely without effect.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. When you say purified protein, what’s the standard for “pure enough”? I see some listings that say things like “>95% by SDS-PAGE”.
To be exact, part of creating the Covid antibody tests was creating the spike protein domains so his company was already creating those for reasons unrelated to making the vaccine.
That side note is interesting and seems worth expanding on. Would seem to suggest that people aren’t so much distrustful of vaccines and medicine as they are distrustful of anything the government wants to stick in their arm for free with penalties for non-compliance. That might even be a reasonable heuristic if it wasn’t the start and end of any reasoning done.
It would also suggest that the way to get the last stuborn 10%/20%/30% of the population vaccinated is to have someone loudly critical of the government make and promote a different vaccine (maybe license and rebrand one from a different not too friendly country), then make people pay for it. Bonus points if the establishment is seen objecting that you shouldn’t go pay for that vaccine when the govt has perfectly good free ones.