Racing From the Outside Rail

    Ever since Covid-19 began hitting the news, and probably before, various medical researchers around the world have been scrambling to create a vaccine for it.  It's interesting to see which of them have gotten the most press.  

    Here in the US, the professional medical journals have been reporting for the last six weeks that Pfizer and BionTech, working jointly on two promising candidates -- BNT-162-b1 and BNT-162-b2 -- have been given Fast Track status by the FDA, which means that they'll be given at least 30,000 volunteer test-subjects and accelerated paperwork-processing for their tests.  By now the tests should be well under way, and we can expect some news of their effectiveness Real Soon Now.  Since both companies have "proprietary" -- which is just short of "patented" -- vaccine development systems, neither one is saying much about just how their vaccines are supposed to defend human cells against the virus.

    Meanwhile, in the UK, a vaccine developed at Oxford University -- called ChAdOx1 -- is likewise racing into human testing, with just over 1000 volunteers, soon to be expanded to 10,000 more, and its developers are more willing to discuss the mechanisms of its operation.  According to the BBC, the prospective vaccine "is made from a genetically engineered virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees... It has been heavily modified, first so it cannot cause infections in people and also to make it 'look' more like coronavirus... This means the vaccine resembles the coronavirus and the immune system can learn how to attack it.  

    "Much of the focus on coronavirus so far has concentrated on antibodies... small proteins that stick onto the surface of viruses.  Neutralizing antibodies can disable the coronavirus.  T-cells, a type of white blood cell, help coordinate the immune system and are able to spot which of the body's cells have been infected and destroy them... Nearly all effective vaccines induce both an antibody and a T-cell response. Levels of T-cells peaked 14 days after vaccination and antibody levels peaked after 28 days.  The study has not run long enough to understand how long they may last."

    More intriguing for its almost total lack of attention in both American and British news media is the development of a different vaccine by the Galilee Research Institute (MIGAL) in Israel.  Israeli health services hoped to have their vaccine ready by the end of May, but a surge of infections in Israel that month -- and since -- have distracted them to searching for treatments, including the promising low-dose radiation therapy, which slowed progress on vaccine development.  This is a pity because the Israeli approach was to start with an effective vaccine against an infectious virus -- IBV -- that causes a bronchial disease in poultry.

    "Our basic concept was to develop the technology...not just a vaccine for this or that kind of virus," said Dr. Chen Katz, MIGAL's biotechnology group leader.  "The scientific framework for the vaccine is based on a new protein expression vector, which forms and secretes a chimeric soluble protein that delivers the viral antigen into mucosal tissues by self-activated endocytosis, causing the body to form antibodies against the virus."

    Endocytosis, as explained by the Jerusalem Post, is a cellular process in which substances are brought into a cell by surrounding the material with cell membrane, forming a vesicle which contains the ingested material.  In pre-clinical trials the team demonstrated that the oral vaccination induces high levels of specific anti-IBV antibodies, Katz said.  "Let's call it pure luck," he continued, "{that} we decided to choose coronavirus as a model for our system just as a proof of concept for our technology."

    This did more than give the MIGAL scientists a head-start on developing a coronavirus vaccine;  the technology itself can be used against other viruses -- many other viruses.  "All we need do is adjust the system to the new {DNA} sequence," said Katz.  Which means that the MIGAL technology can produce broad-spectrum antiviral medicines.  This could have as profound an effect on medicine as the development of antibiotics did nearly a century ago.  

    Katz and his MIGAL team made this announcement at the end of February, when he claimed that this new technology could possibly provide a vaccine against Covid-19 in as few as 90 days.  But, strangely enough, nothing further has been said about the MIGAL vaccine, let alone its promising technology, since early April.  There's been nothing about it, anywhere, in the media.  

    One has to wonder why.  

    Well, what else has been happening in Israel in the last four months?  

    First, the United Arab Emirates very visibly made peace with Israel, despite the squawks of outrage from the Palestinians, and Iran.  Now Saudi Arabia has been showing signs of falling in with the UAE.  The third of the Big Three Arab counties, Turkey, has suddenly fallen silent on the subject of Israel, reversing decades of retreat from the reforms of Ataturk a century ago.  Could it be that they have medical scientists among their ranks who realize what MIGAL's new technology could mean to the world, and they want to be on the right -- and money-making -- side?

    Could it be that those few Arabs who are educated, and level-headed, enough to value health and wealth and wisdom in this world above the pleasures of blind fanaticism have come to realize that Israel is on its way to being the world's powerhouse of biomedical research and technology?  Think of the implications.  

--Leslie <;)))><