that first sentence is 100% false unless “proved themselves” means something like “proved that they are smart people” or “proved that they are acting in good faith” rather than “proved that they have something that works”, which means that the second is waaaay premature.
RaDVaC is not only about the particular technology but also about the way the organization runs differently. The approach of being public about the technology and regularly iterating it is very different than the way vaccines are traditionally produced.
RaDVaC is for example right now both looking into the small peptide version they started out with as well as looking at subunit vaccines.
This is correct. RaDVaC is not committed exclusively to a single technology platform; we evaluated (and continuously re-evaluate) the advantages and disadvantages of vaccine platforms like VLP, subunit, peptide, DNA, and mRNA.
All our designs so far have been based on self-assembling nanoparticles transporting peptide antigens, because all materials for both nanoparticle and peptide antigens are highly accessible: readily available, relatively inexpensive, individually safe (not requiring any advanced biosafety conditions for shipping, storage, or use), and quick to source. This design is also very easily produced.
That basic nanoparticle platform (which we’ve open-sourced, along with our peptide designs) is adaptable to other antigens, such as larger recombinant subunits, which we are working on now, for consideration to add to a future version of our white paper. Advantages to recombinant antigens include likely better immunogenicity than peptides, and greater production independence/decentralizability–plus, cells producing such an antigen would likely be a shareable resource.
Adaptability is, I think, quite a cool feature of a platform, and it’s a feature that’s shared in principle by nucleic acid vaccines. The drawback there is largely one of accessibility: modifying code is no big deal, but executing that code is, in practice, far more difficult than producing peptides or even larger proteins. (For now. Many of us at RaDVaC anticipate that the costs associated with both pseudouridine-mRNA and LNP production will come down drastically over the next few years. We’re excited about that.)
RaDVaC is not only about the particular technology but also about the way the organization runs differently. The approach of being public about the technology and regularly iterating it is very different than the way vaccines are traditionally produced.
RaDVaC is for example right now both looking into the small peptide version they started out with as well as looking at subunit vaccines.
This is correct. RaDVaC is not committed exclusively to a single technology platform; we evaluated (and continuously re-evaluate) the advantages and disadvantages of vaccine platforms like VLP, subunit, peptide, DNA, and mRNA.
All our designs so far have been based on self-assembling nanoparticles transporting peptide antigens, because all materials for both nanoparticle and peptide antigens are highly accessible: readily available, relatively inexpensive, individually safe (not requiring any advanced biosafety conditions for shipping, storage, or use), and quick to source. This design is also very easily produced.
That basic nanoparticle platform (which we’ve open-sourced, along with our peptide designs) is adaptable to other antigens, such as larger recombinant subunits, which we are working on now, for consideration to add to a future version of our white paper. Advantages to recombinant antigens include likely better immunogenicity than peptides, and greater production independence/decentralizability–plus, cells producing such an antigen would likely be a shareable resource.
Adaptability is, I think, quite a cool feature of a platform, and it’s a feature that’s shared in principle by nucleic acid vaccines. The drawback there is largely one of accessibility: modifying code is no big deal, but executing that code is, in practice, far more difficult than producing peptides or even larger proteins. (For now. Many of us at RaDVaC anticipate that the costs associated with both pseudouridine-mRNA and LNP production will come down drastically over the next few years. We’re excited about that.)