Believe it or not, vaccines aren’t a one-size-fits-all kind of a thing.
“There are several different types of vaccines. Each type is designed to teach your immune system how to fight off certain kinds of germs — and the serious diseases they cause.”
Vaccine Types
In addition to live vaccines, like MMR, there are inactivated vaccines, toxoid vaccines, and subunit, recombinant, polysaccharide, and conjugate vaccines.
Are You Ready for DNA Vaccines?
Vaccines made with current technology have helped save millions of lives.
It’s time for some new approaches though, especially as we are seeing the limitations of some of our current vaccines, especially the seasonal flu vaccine.
“DNA vaccines take immunization to a new technological level. These vaccines dispense with both the whole organism and its parts and get right down to the essentials: the microbe’s genetic material. In particular, DNA vaccines use the genes that code for those all-important antigens.”
NIH on Vaccine Types
While a DNA vaccine might sound like something out of the 23rd century, researchers have been studying them since the 1990s.
“Researchers have found that when the genes for a microbe’s antigens are introduced into the body, some cells will take up that DNA. The DNA then instructs those cells to make the antigen molecules. The cells secrete the antigens and display them on their surfaces. In other words, the body’s own cells become vaccine-making factories, creating the antigens necessary to stimulate the immune system.”
NIH on Vaccine Types
Does the idea of being injected with the genes for a microbe’s antigens scare you?
“The original concerns associated with the DNA platform were the potential for genomic integration and development of anti-DNA immune responses. Exhaustive research has found little evidence of integration, and the risk for integration appears to be significantly lower than that associated with naturally occurring mutations”
Ferraro et al on Clinical Applications of DNA Vaccines: Current Progress
What do you think happens when you get the flu?
The flu virus and it’s DNA is taken up by your cells, and those cells then start making more flu proteins.
“This approach offers a number of potential advantages over traditional approaches, including the stimulation of both B- and T-cell responses, improved vaccine stability, the absence of any infectious agent and the relative ease of large-scale manufacture.”
WHO on DNA Vaccines
So where are all of the DNA vaccines?
“However, the results of these early clinical trials were disappointing. The DNA vaccines were safe and well tolerated, but they proved to be poorly immunogenic. The induced antibody titers were very low or nonexistent, CD8+ T-cell responses were sporadic, and CD4+ T-cell responses were of low frequency. However, these studies provided proof of concept that DNA vaccines could safely induce immune responses (albeit low-level responses) in humans.”
Ferraro et al on Clinical Applications of DNA Vaccines: Current Progress
After getting disappointing results in the 1990s, researchers have since moved on to second-generation DNA vaccines, which are being tested for HIV treatment and prevention, Zika, Dengue fever, influenza (DNA vaccine prime), HPV, cancer treatment (metastatic breast, B cell lymphoma, melanoma, prostate, colorectal), chronic hepatitis B treatment, chronic hepatitis C treatment, herpes, and malaria.
While many of these DNA vaccines are now in phase I and II trials, unfortunately, that means we are still a long time away from having a DNA vaccine on the immunization schedule.
More on DNA Vaccines
- Vaccine Types
- NIH – Vaccine Types
- FDA – Vaccine Innovation and Regulatory Science
- Clinical Applications of DNA Vaccines: Current Progress
- A Review of DNA Vaccines Against Influenza
- DNA Prime / Subunit Boost Multi-Antigen Universal Influenza Vaccine
- WHO – DNA Vaccines
- Influenza 101
- The Future of Immunization
- Cancer Vaccines and Immunotherapy
- Quoth an antivaxer: DNA vaccines are contaminating our DNA in the name of transhumanism!