Potential Vaccination Approaches

[DHW]

Merely a student trying to wrap my head around the fact that this virus has caused so many complications and detriment to society, I had some questions with regards to the vaccination development process. Since I am not physically in a laboratory, there is minimal and dare I say vague information available to the public eye. If someone is aware of any resources besides the CDC and the NIH that really dig into the nitty gritty and the specifics of what is going on, it would be greatly appreciated if that information was shared. I am not sure if private laboratories are published findings at this time.

That being said, the first question I have is the type of vaccine. There has been some talk in earlier years about an inhalant as a vaccination. Given this a respiratory affecting disease, would that even be considered as a feasible option or is there not enough research done on the effects of inhalants in the realm of vaccines? Also, could you provide justification for that so I can get a better perspective of the reasoning behind that. It is very much understood that we have to get a vaccine developed prior to talking about implementation or at least those should be done together, but I wasn’t sure if the transition to work with a corticosteroid would be useful or essential to discuss at this time.

Has anyone looked at an influenza virion compare to a COVID-19 virion? Just trying to get some understanding with differentiating the two structures. Is the main difference, other than attacking function, with regards to the fact that COVID-19 is very protein heavy versus influenza has a lipid protecting layer? Does having that many layers of protein protection make things more difficult or is it simply the fact that we don’t know too much about the spike protein even though it’s a glycoprotein (same thing happened with Ebola)?

Finally, I don’t know what the development has been so far for this vaccine, but is it possible to have a naturally antiviral functioning fungus as a possibility for combatting the virus since it functions as such in other hosts? For example, going back to the proposal of an inhaled corticosteroid, with some respiratory complications glucocorticosteroids have been effective and has direct interaction with the lungs. However, combined with a fungal species that may be beneficial. Unless it revolves back to the fact that corticosteroids can induce fungal infection which may be another issue at hand. Any thoughts on that?

If these questions confuse anyone, it’s fine, but I would like to discuss this matter if anyone refer me to somewhere, I can do that other than this platform. Thank you in advance!

[Area54]

This linked Financial Times article may address some of your questions and should, at least, be of interest to other members.

[CharonY]

There are a lot of different approaches and quite a few resources tracking current developments (e.g. here). If not provided, you can then google the respective type of vaccines to get more info on the type. Due to urgency there are many more types in development than you would normally see.

Folks have a good idea about the structure of SARS-CoV-2. I am not sure why you would want to compare it to influenza, though. It is a coronavirus and there is quite a bit info about coronaviruses available. I am not sure why a comparison specifically to influenza is relevant. 

Steroids are (regardless of origin) are not antivirals as such. Their main role in treating infections is that they modulate inflammatory and immune responses. In COVID-19 these inflammations cause severe damages and treatment with steroids have shown to mitigate effects. There are other components that are suspected or shown in vitro to have antiviral properties but I suspect most are a couple of steps away before they can be demonstrated to be viable treatment options (but I have not really followed the lit, so there may be developments that I am not aware of).