Easy-to-deliver mRNA treatment shows promise for stopping flu and COVID-19 viruses

 With a relatively minor genetic change, a new treatment developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University appears to stop replication of both flu viruses and the virus that causes COVID-19. Best of all, the treatment could be delivered to the lungs via a nebulizer, making it easy for patients to administer themselves at home.

The therapy is based on a type of CRISPR, which normally allows researchers to target and edit specific portions of the genetic code, to target RNA molecules. In this case, the team used mRNA technology to code for a protein called Cas13a that destroys parts of the RNA genetic code that viruses use to replicate in cells in the lungs. It was developed by researchers in Philip Santangelo's lab in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering.

"In our drug, the only thing you have to change to go from one virus to another is the guide strand—we only have to change one sequence of RNA. That's it," Santangelo said. "We went from flu to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They're incredibly different viruses. And we were able to do that very, very rapidly by just changing a guide."

The guide strand is a map that basically tells the Cas13a protein where to attach to the viruses' RNA and begin to destroy it. Working with collaborators at the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, and Kennesaw State University, Santangelo's team tested its approach against flu in mice and SARS-CoV-2 in hamsters. In both cases, the sick animals recovered.

Their results are reported Feb. 3 in the journal Nature Biotechnology. It's the first study to show mRNA can be used to express the Cas13a protein and get it to work directly in lung tissue rather than in cells in a dish. It's also the first to demonstrate the Cas13a protein is effective at stopping replication of SARS-CoV-2.

What's more, the team's approach has the potential to work against 99% of flu strains that have circulated over the last century. It also appears it would be effective against the new highly contagious variants of the coronavirus that have begun to circulate.

The key to that broad effectiveness is the sequence of genes the researchers target.

"In flu, we're attacking the polymerase genes. Those are the enzymes that allow the virus to make more RNA and to replicate," said Santangelo, the study's corresponding author.

With help from a collaborator at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they looked at the genetic sequences of prevalent flu strains over the last 100 years and found regions of RNA that are unchanged across nearly all of them.

"We went after those, because they're far better conserved," Santangelo said. "We let the biology dictate what our targets would be."

Likewise, in SARS-CoV-2, the sequences the researchers targeted so far remain unchanged in the new variants.

The approach means the treatment is flexible and adaptable as new viruses emerge, said Daryll Vanover, a research scientist in Santangelo's lab and the paper's second author.

"One of the first things that society and the CDC is going to get when a pandemic emerges is the genetic sequence. It's one of the first tools that the CDC and the surveillance teams are going to use to identify what kind of virus this is and to begin tracking it," Vanover said. "Once the CDC publishes those sequences—that's all we need. We can immediately screen across the regions that we're interested in to target it and knock down the virus."

Vanover said that can result in lead candidates for clinical trials in a matter of weeks—which is about how long it took them to scan the sequences, design their guide strands, and be ready for testing in this study.

"It's really quite plug-and-play," Santangelo said. "If you're talking about small tweaks versus large tweaks, it's a big bonus in terms of time. And in pandemics—if we had had a vaccine in a month or two after the pandemic hit, think about what things would look like now. If we had a therapy a month after it hit, what would things look like now? It could make a huge difference, the impact on the economy, the impact on people."

The project was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) PReemptive Expression of Protective Alleles and Response Elements (PREPARE) program, with the goal of creating safe, effective, transient, and reversible gene modulators as medical countermeasures that could be adapted and delivered rapidly. That's why the team decided to try a nebulizer for delivering the treatment, Santangelo said.

"If you're really trying to think of something that's going to be a treatment that someone can actually give themselves in their own house, the nebulizer we used is not terribly different from one that you can go buy at a pharmacy," he said.

The team's approach also was sped along by their previous work on delivering mRNA to mucosal surfaces like those in the lungs. They knew there was a good chance they could tackle respiratory infections with that approach. They decided to use mRNA to code for the Cas13a protein because it's an inherently safe technique.

"The mRNA is transient. It doesn't get into the nucleus, doesn't affect your DNA," Santangelo said, "and for these CRISPR proteins, you really don't want them expressed for long periods of time."

He and Vanover said additional work remains—especially understanding more about the specific mechanisms that make the treatment effective. It has produced no side effects in the animal models, but they want to take a deeper look at safety as they consider moving closer to a therapy for human patients.

"This project really gave us the opportunity to push our limits in the lab in terms of techniques, in terms of new strategy," said Chiara Zurla, the team's project manager and a co-author on the paper. "Especially with the pandemic, we feel an obligation to do as much as we can as well as we can. This first paper is a great example, but many will follow; we've done a lot of work, and we have a lot of promising results."

More information: Emmeline L. Blanchard et al, Treatment of influenza and SARS-CoV-2 infections via mRNA-encoded Cas13a in rodents, Nature Biotechnology (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41587-021-00822-w

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-03-easy-to-deliver-mrna-treatment-flu-covid-.html

Florida has scientists 'encouraged' when it comes to U.K. coronavirus variant

 It's difficult to tell exactly how many cases of the so-called U.K. variant of the novel coronavirus, or B.1.1.7, are in the United States because the country hasn't conducted enough genomic sequencing yet to get a real read. But data analysis from Helix, a lab testing company, estimates B.1.1.7 accounted for more than 20 percent of new cases in the U.S. this week, The New York Times reports. That's concerning because the variant is highly transmissible, but scientists are fairly encouraged by what they're seeing so far.

Take Florida, for instance. The Sunshine State is believed to have the highest share of B.1.1.7 COVID-19 cases at an estimated 30 percent. Yet, Florida has not experienced a resurgence in overall infections. "I am encouraged by the declining case counts in the most heavily affected states," Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist from Johns Hopkins University, told the Times. "I've been watching Florida closely, which has the highest share of B.1.1.7. Case counts have plateaued there in recent days, but are not resurging. The longer we can hold the line, the more time we have to roll out vaccines, which will protect individuals, particularly those at highest risk of severe illness, and slow transmission overall."

https://news.yahoo.com/why-florida-scientists-encouraged-comes-193200399.html

Decentralized ID, biometric payment cards, health passes, and birth registration loom

 New partnerships announced on decentralized ID and biometric payment cards shook up the industry this week, with Microsoft signing up numerous device-based biometrics providers and an MoU between Samsung and Mastercard. A new offering of shares to the U.S. market by Idex Biometrics and a new passport contract for Veridos illustrate momentum in different markets, meanwhile, and an interview with IrisGuard was also among the most-read articles of the past week.

Many of the top digital identity companies providing biometric authentication have joined Microsoft’s decentralized ID push, including Acuant, AU10TIX, Idemia, Jumio, Socure, Onfido, and Vu Security, and the company announced it will bring its DID credentials to public preview in the months ahead. Microsoft is also moving forward with its plans for passwordless authentication, including extending the capabilities of its Passwordless Pilot Program collaboration with AuthenTrend.

Speculation and planning around mandates for vaccine certificates and health passes have reached a fever pitch, with the U.S. and EU considering next steps, Israelis are already using their ‘Green Passes,’ and the UK government is reportedly talking to iProov about adapting the NHS COVID-19 app. Airlines continue to adopt the credentials as well, as the battered industry attempts to safely ramp operations back towards a semblance of normality.

SITA has suffered a data breach affecting passengers of Star Alliance airlines and at least some of their partners, but biometric data does not appear to be involved, as the Guardian reports an email to Air New Zealand passengers states the data was limited to “name, tier status and membership number.” Infosecurity Magazine notes the difficulty of securing complex IT environments like those in aviation.

Companies continue to work on biometric payment cards, and signs that consumers want them continue to roll in, with Goldpac launching a new card to go with China’s digital currency ambitions, CardLab joining a Mastercard growth program, and a survey from TietoEVRY and Zwipe suggesting the UK market is ready for mass adoption now.

The launch of Idex Biometrics shares on the Nasdaq, accordingly, was the subject of a lofty earnings potential estimate from one analyst, and the company closed its first day up. The Idex ADS price closed its first week at $24.90.

The biometric card market has been largely divided into two solutions developed by partnerships including fingerprint sensor-makers, but that may be changing as two different divisions of Samsung have formed a partnership with Mastercard to develop and issue payment cards. The plan is to reach the Korean market with corporate credit cards during this year.

Birth registration and collecting useful biometric from infants remain significant challenges, but progress is being made on both fronts, attendees of an ID4Africa webinar heard. Important work remains, at least in terms of government policy and procedure, if the gains are sufficient to enable the achievement of SDG 16.9’s indicator goal of universal birth registration by 2030, however. A new definition of legal identity was also offered up during the event, to help bring clarity to the issue.

Nigerians in the State of Kaduna will need to use a state Residents Card or their NIN to access a range of public services as of May 1. One-third of the state’s population had been registered for a NIN as of mid-February, while the state continues to issue the new Residents Card, a digital ID also backed by NIMC and established in 2017 to replace several legacy IDs for specific services.

MTC Namibia’s new Verifi consumer data protection service, which promises security backed by biometrics and AI, is examined by The Namibian, which explains it is comparable to SIM registration. The article draws a questionable connection between such systems and mass government surveillance, but also notes that an expected data protection bill was not included in a recent parliamentary agenda for 2021.

Investments have been announced into two efforts to build out digital ID in Canada, as the Digital Identity Laboratory of Canada has raised close to a million dollars in support from a government body, along with Accenture, Deloitte, Interac and KPMG, while IBM Canada has won a contract to enable remote passport applications.

Veridos has won the contract for Denmark’s new passports, in a seven-year deal, along with partner idpeople. A total of seven different passports types will be made, each with biometric data embedded in electronic chips for ICAO compliance, and issuance is expected to begin in October.

Getting essential deliveries like groceries to people in refugee camps has become even more challenging amidst the pandemic, but as IrisGuard Deputy Director Simon Reed tells Biometric Update, iris biometrics are keeping the aid systems serving millions of displaced people in Jordan functioning. Contactless biometrics prevent illness transmission, while reducing the fraud rate found in debit card systems, which the company has found to be as high as 26 percent.

An article published in the Communications of the ACM lays out a particular interpretation of what facial recognition is and the technology’s problems with demographic performance disparities, or bias. Bias can enter the development process at any step, according to an IBM researcher quoted by ACM, who says “There’s just nothing good that can come out of” facial recognition. The article closes by noting the inadequacy of the ACLU-style assessment that Clearview AI used to deny any bias in its app.

The “Xueliang Project” or “Sharp Eyes” surveillance program run by the Chinese government, which involves citizens having access to public surveillance feeds in order to police each other, seems to have come fairly close to its goal of 100 percent camera coverage of China’s public spaces by 2020, according to an article from OneZero that details the program, along with similar programs Golden Shield Project, Safe Cities, SkyNet and Smart Cities, at least some of which use biometrics. Some of the companies supplying the technology are well-known around the world, some hardly known at all outside of China.

https://www.biometricupdate.com/202103/opportunity-knocks-for-decentralized-id-biometric-payment-cards-health-passes-and-birth-registration

Dutch dance lovers offered lockdown relief at test event

 Dance music lovers in Amsterdam were offered a short relief from COVID-19 lockdown on Saturday, treated to their first live show in over a year while serving as guinea pigs in a research project.

A total of 1,300 people were allowed at a carefully orchestrated test event in Amsterdam’s biggest music hall, the ZiggoDome, which in normal times has a capacity of up to 17,000.

Dancing to tunes delivered by Dutch DJs Sam Feldt, Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano and others, the fans were followed in all their movements and contacts through a tag they were made to wear, in an effort to see how events might safely be opened up for the public again.

“It’s unbelievable. I feel like a kid, I was jumping and screaming walking in”, Sunnery James told Reuters before his show.

“Hopefully we can show governments around the world that we can make this happen.”

All guests needed to test negative for coronavirus 48 hours in advance and were urged to take another test five days after the event.

Inside, they were divided into six groups, all with different guidelines on social distancing and face masks and with varying degrees of freedom to move around.

Government advisers will use the data on their behaviour to inform decisions on possibly easing lockdown in coming months.

“We hope this can lead to a tailor-made reopening of venues”, organiser Tim Boersma said.

“Measures are now generic, allowing for instance a maximum of 100 guests at any event if coronavirus infections drop to a certain level. We hope for more specific measures, such as allowing the ZiggoDome to open at half its capacity.”

The dance festival is part of a series of government-backed test events which also includes a business conference, two football matches and a comedy show, all with different rules for different groups, to see what works best.

The Dutch government last week gradually eased lockdown measures, as it allowed a limited reopening of non-essential stores and secondary schools, even though infections have been rising in recent weeks as more contagious virus mutations take hold.

All bars and restaurants in the Netherlands have been closed since mid-October, while a nationwide 9:00 P.M. to 4.30 A.M. curfew has been in place for the past six weeks.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-netherlands-dance/dutch-dance-lovers-offered-lockdown-relief-at-test-event-idUSKBN2AZ08X

China says it's ready to provide vaccines to overseas Chinese, Olympians

 China said on Sunday it has plans to set up COVID-19 vaccination stations to vaccinate Chinese citizens abroad and is also ready to work with the International Olympic Committee to help provide vaccines to Olympic athletes for upcoming events.

China has developed several vaccines domestically and has begun its own vaccination drive, with plans to vaccinate 40% of its population by July.

China’s top government diplomat Wang Yi made the comments during his annual news conference held on Sunday.

“We are preparing to set up regional vaccination sites for domestically produced vaccines in countries where conditions permit, to provide services to compatriots in need in neighbouring countries,” said Wang.

He said some Chinese citizens were already receiving Chinese-made vaccines abroad according to local law.

He said China would also make vaccines available to Olympians, and is open to discussions on mutually recognising vaccines with other countries, but did not offer specifics.

China is set to hold the 2022 Winter Olympics next year, while the Summer Olympics are scheduled to take place in Japan later this year.

China has said it plans to provide 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to global vaccine sharing scheme COVAX. Vaccines from Chinese firms are already being offered in several countries, including Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

During Sunday’s news conference, Wang also spoke against “vaccine nationalism”, and said China would resist any attempt to politicise vaccine cooperation.

Beijing has repeatedly called into question the idea that the new coronavirus originated in China, and has embarked upon a vaccine diplomacy campaign to send Chinese-developed shots against COVID-19 around the world.

China has denied exploiting the fight against COVID-19 to boost its global influence.

President Xi Jinping has pledged to make China’s vaccines a “global public good.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-parliament-vaccinations-idUSKBN2AZ07F

N. Mich. health departments accelerate past state in expanding vaccine eligibility

 Local health districts in Northern Michigan said Thursday they will expand COVID-19 vaccine eligibility at a faster pace than state guidelines.

Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services said earlier this week that anyone 50 and older could get vaccinated against the virus starting on Monday, March 22. People in that age group could get vaccinated earlier — March 8 — if they had a pre-existing condition that would make them particularly vulnerable to the virus.

But several Northern Michigan health districts said their March 8 eligibility expansion will include anyone 50 and up, regardless of pre-existing conditions.

In the Northwest and Benzie-Leelanau district health departments, which cover six counties in the northern Lower Peninsula, health officer Lisa Peacock said the state allows for local adjustments to prioritization guidelines. She said for her districts, simplifying the eligibility steps would get more people vaccinated faster.

“We will not be vetting for medical conditions,” Peacock said. “Given our smaller population, it probably would take more time to try and sort out who would be eligible within that 50-and-older age group than to just vaccinate all of them.”

District Health Department No. 4, which covers a collection of counties just south of the Mackinac Bridge, and the LMAS District Health Department, which covers four counties just north of the bridge, both said they’re taking the same tack.

Kerry Ott, the spokesperson for the LMAS department, said the waitlist for vaccines there had dwindled, as local health workers had been able to vaccinate almost all of the people older than 65 or in high-priority groups based on their jobs who had signed up to get a shot.

She said anyone in those high-priority groups who has not gotten vaccinated yet won’t be left behind. “We will continue to vaccinate anyone in those groups who may have had some hesitation about the vaccine who would now like to receive it,” she said.

Several districts said their vaccine supplies are growing and becoming more reliable, which allows them to schedule more people for appointments.

The number of places vaccines are available has also grown. In addition to local health districts, some pharmacies and community health centers are also getting doses.

Peacock, the health officer for district 4 and Benzie-Leelanau, said people should check with their local health district to find out where vaccines are available near them.

https://www.michiganradio.org/post/northern-michigan-health-departments-accelerate-past-state-expanding-vaccine-eligibility

NY Prisons Start Vaccinating Inmates With Pre-Existing Conditions

 New York state prisons quietly started offering COVID-19 vaccines to people in their custody with pre-existing health conditions on Friday, nearly three weeks after that group became eligible in the general population. In a statement, the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said it waited until everyone who was over 65 who wanted the vaccine got their second dose.

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office and his Department of Health have dragged their feet on inoculating people incarcerated in state prison since the shots became available in December, despite calls to prioritize this vulnerable population. The coronavirus has ravaged jails and prisons since the start of the pandemic. As of March 2nd, there were 5,948 coronavirus cases confirmed in state prisons and 34 deaths

“We are glad that that’s happening, but it’s simply not good enough,” Elizabeth Fischer, a lawyer with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, said of the move to offer shots to those with pre-existing conditions.

Her law firm is among the public defenders' offices that filed a class-action lawsuit against the state on February 4th on behalf of inmates on Rikers Island. The lawsuit aims to change state policy, which dictates vaccine eligibility.

“Because of how COVID-19 is transmitted, individuals living and working in congregate settings—such as jails and prisons—are at higher risk for COVID-19 exposure and infection,” the complaint in the lawsuit reads.

It was only after the lawsuit was filed that the state lifted its ban and provided shots to inmates over the age of 65. Federal prisons had started their vaccination effort in late December, and New York City jails began a similar program in early January. The staff in state prisons also started receiving doses months ago and 7,439 have been vaccinated to date.

So far, 822 of the 1,066 seniors in state prisons have accepted their shots, according to DOCCS. Another 3,575 incarcerated people with pre-existing conditions will now be offered the shots.

In a statement, DOCCS said, “The state’s singular goal is and has been to get as many New Yorkers vaccinated as quickly as possible, and DOCCS has been working with NYS DOH to do the same with the incarcerated population.”

Public defenders aren’t the only ones who have called on the state to make this policy change. The American Medical Association made the recommendation in December. Last month, a broad coalition of health care professionals and advocates sent a letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo urging him to change course.

“The public health basis for prioritizing vaccine access in prisons and jails is clear,” the letter said. “By their very nature as congregate facilities, they are hotbeds for the spread of disease. The most basic precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19—social distancing, personal protective equipment (PPE), regular handwashing and disinfection cleaning—are not available to people in correctional facilities.”

New York has already opened up universal vaccination for others living in congregate settings such as residents of group homes run by the Office of Mental Health.

“There’s no reason beyond politics and animus toward incarcerated people to be drawing these kinds of distinctions and only making certain groups of incarcerated people eligible for the vaccine,” Fischer said. “The state has a moral and legal obligation to be vaccinating all incarcerated people.”

https://gothamist.com/news/ny-prisons-start-vaccinating-inmates-pre-existing-conditions