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by Julie Beal
Not all coronavirus vaccines use mRNA or DNA.
The way the artificial proteins are made reveals the short cuts being taken with the mRNA/DNA versions and why calling them vaccines is the equivalent to saying a home-brew kit is the same as a glass of wine.
Bringing the DNA to life
To make a protein vaccine you need a bunch of cells and a bioreactor to put them in.
DNA is injected into the cells and activated with a spark of electric, in a process known as electroporation. The cells are kept alive by feeding them so they replicate or grow, and at the same time they pump out the proteins that were encoded into the DNA.
Valneva is producing a coronavirus vaccine using cells that came from the kidney of an African green monkey, whilst others are using insect cells.
Other proteins are grown in yeast cells, and there's a flu vaccine grown in cells from the larvae of a moth.
The DNA from any of these cells can end up in the vaccine.
How to Make a Protein Vaccine
Using people as vaccine-factories
Genetic vaccines containing DNA or mRNA miss out the last few steps of this production process.
Instead of using cells in a bioreactor to manufacture proteins, they use the cells of the human body.
This means the substance being injected only becomes vaccine-like once the host has done the work and produced whichever protein it's encoded with.
It saves manufacturers a huge amount of time and money by turning people into walking-talking vaccine-factories that do the job for them.
The production of the vaccine only occurs if the body translates the genetic sequences, so there's no way to know what dose anybody's getting, because some people may translate more of the sequences and therefore make more proteins!
A lot of synthetic vaccines have had bad press (e.g. Pandemrix in the 2009 fake pandemic) but Big Pharma has plenty more planned because it's a versatile and patentable platform.
The heroin vaccine is a good example of this:
And how long would it take for flu vaccines to be added to the vax ID passport?
Flublok - a synthetic flu vaccine
Flublok has been licensed for use in the UK and the US. It contains hemagglutinin (HA) proteins from four different influenza viruses (e.g. selected by the FDA, one of which is the 2009 swine flu virus).
The HAs of all four strains are encoded into a genetically engineered insect virus (called 'baculovirus') and used to infect a cell-line generated from the ovaries of the fall armyworm (it's related to moths, caterpillars and butterflies).
This infected mass of cells is fermented in a big metal vat or bioreactor, and kept alive by feeding it a chemically-defined broth.
When enough HA proteins have been produced by the cells, they're extracted with Triton X-100 (which may have, "potential endocrine disrupting properties").
It also contains Tween20 and "has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential". i
Genetic Contaminants
Protein vaccines are often tainted with contaminants, such as DNA from the cells they were grown in, and these are usually listed in the package insert.
For instance, Flublok may contain some proteins or DNA from the insect cells or baculovirus it was grown in. Another example is the two vaccines for rotavirus that were found to contain DNA from a pig virus.
There's also a risk of microbes such as mycoplasma getting into vaccines; this happened in 2015 when a group of 94 people were injected with a genetic HIV vaccine contaminated with a type of bacteria normally found in pigs.
Weird Adjuvants
Synthetic protein vaccines are thought to be ineffective unless they contain adjuvants.
All sorts of weird stuff has been invented over the last ten years or so, using chemical and genetic engineering to create substances that can force the body to have a particular type of immune response.
For example, nanoparticles can make people produce inflammatory cytokines by activating the inflammasome. Protein vaccines often contain lipid nanoparticles, such as MPLA, saponin, cholesterol and squalene.
Many also contain aluminium, and some contain CpG ODNs and other weird stuff like cholera toxins.
The shape of the proteins
Proteins are made of strings of amino acids, and they're all folded into specific shapes.
When proteins become mis-folded, they are less likely to create the desired type of antibodies, and this has been linked to vaccine-associated disease enhancement (VADE).
A well-known example of this type of vaccine-risk is antibody dependent enhancement, or ADE, and is linked to SARS vaccines.
Viruses in old-fashioned vaccines could end up mis-shapen when formalin was used to inactivate them so they didn't look like the original virus anymore, and this was said to be one of the reasons people made the wrong kind of antibodies and got ADE after having vaccines against measles, etc.
Cell-based proteins are said to have the same problem since they can also become mis-shapen or unfolded due to the way they're produced.
Proteins produced in cells can end up having,
Lots of things can cause a protein to get warped or denatured, such as changes in pH or temperature.
Even the stuff they add as adjuvants can warp the proteins, e.g. aluminium can cause them to unfold whilst lipid emulsions can "induce structural changes".
This is one of the reasons why there have been attempts to stabilize the proteins added to vaccines, as illustrated by Novavax.
The Novavax protein vaccine
Novavax was awarded $1.6 billion through 'Operation Warp Speed' to make their NVX-CoV2373 coronavirus protein vaccine iv using baculoviruses and insect cells, so it's very similar to the Valneva and Sanofi/GSK vaccines which are also made with baculoviruses and insect cells.
Novavax had plenty of practice with the spike protein before the ronascam began, because they'd already developed a MERS-CoV vax and had even tested it on humans.
This vaccine was described in a 2013 patent and contains their proprietary adjuvant, Matrix-M.
This adjuvant is a mixture of saponin, cholesterol, and phospholipid nanoparticles, and it's being added to their coronavirus vaccine.
The patent also covers SARS coronaviruses and describes using,
The resulting product can be used in one of two ways: either injected directly into humans as a vaccine, or injected into humanized cows or horses so they produce "human antibodies" which can then be harvested from the animals and injected into humans.
Novavax tested the MERS version of these humanized antibodies in a clinical trial in 2014, with reported side effects including fatigue, loose stools, and sore throat.
The Novavax Corona-Makeover
Novavax is now using the NIH's pre-fusion design to make the spike protein. (AstraZeneca isn't, but J&J, Moderna and Pfizer are!)
The pre-fusion design involves changing (or mutating) two amino acids to proline and is usually referred to as S-2P.
Proline is used to lock the spike into position by making it more rigid and less likely to unfold but these ultra-stable spikes could cause even more damage to the body than the original virus because they're also extra-spikey!
On top of that, they can easily spread around the body because they're really small and protected by lipid nanoparticles.
The current coronavirus vaccines have been shown to reach the brain, ovaries and testis; this could cause inflammation in these very sensitive areas and may explain some of the neurological and menstrual problems people have been reporting.
Novavax have created some extra mutations in the spike by changing the amino acids that constitute the furin cleavage site, which consists of four amino acids.
Novavax have mutated it from RRAR to QQAQ (R=Arginine; A=Alanine; Q=Glutamine).
It's worth knowing about these kinds of mutations because they were a key part of the gain-of-function (GoF) research funded by the NIH and outsourced to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus appears to be a man-made construct and could have been enabled by the insights gained during this GoF research. Future articles will look at these issues in more detail, such as the furin cleavage site which nobody can explain.
The unusual appearance of a furin cleavage site was a boon for the NIH because they'd spent the previous decade experimenting with the structure of coronaviruses in the Argonne National Laboratory, and had come up with the S-2P pre-fusion design in 2014.
The development of a coronavirus vaccine was complemented by the GoF research, e.g. using the bat coronaviruses to patent a coronavirus vaccine!
The NIH was also doing secretive work with Moderna that involved using MERS and other viruses that also have a furin cleavage site - this includes most of the so-called outbreaks that have occurred over the past two decades!
All of this research resulted in the creation of the NIH's ronascam solutions-package that was ready-to-go by 2020 ...
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