Vaccines for COVID-19 moving closer

As the world reels from illnesses and deaths due to COVID-19, the race is on for a safe, effective, long-lasting vaccine to help the body block the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The three vaccine approaches discussed here are among the first to be tested clinically in the United States. How vaccines induce immunity: The starting line In 1796, in a pastoral corner of England, and during a far more feudal and ethically less enlightened time, Edward Jenner, an English country surgeon, inoculated James Phipps, his gardener’s eight-year-old son, with cowpox pustules obtained from the arm of a milkmaid. It was widely believed at the time that once milkmaids became ill with cowpox, a relatively mild disease, they were no longer susceptible to smallpox. The young boy became quite ill, but recovered in about a week. Jenner then injected James with material from a smallpox pustule and observed that nothing untoward happened. A new scientific approach to disease prevention was born. A century later, it became clear that vaccination — a term Jenner coined from the Latin name for cowpox, Vaccinae variolae — worked because vaccines induce protective immune responses. We now know that vaccines can generate neutralizing antibodies by activating immune cells called B lymphocytes that secrete those molecules. Antibodies specifically recognize a shape on a virus or a toxin and bind to it, much like a key that tightly fits into a lock. They can then block the virus or toxin from binding to...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Coronavirus and COVID-19 Health Infectious diseases Vaccines Source Type: blogs