Page 10 - Lambda News Today

November marked National Prematurity Awareness Month, which provided an opportunity to reflect on the 400,000 babies born preterm annually in the United States, and what can be done about it.

Each winter. >> laura: we need it or does moderna need it? what is the evidence of any of this? >> the omicron -- the b 11529 variant has 30 mutations. the domain has been changed with ten mutations there. its not going to be as infectious. the early reports from dr. fantini in france indicates the transmissibility index of the omicron variant is far less than delta. so it doesnt look like its going to be a dominant strain. i think it will be like the lambda and the epsilon variants described in...

Will, as a regular thing. laura: we need it or does moderna need it? what is the evidence of any of this? >> the oma cron variant looks like an evolutionary mistake a 30 mutations in the spike protein, three deletions and one insertion, almost certainly the receptor body domain has been changed, it is not going to be as infectious. the early reports from the university to indicate the transmissibility index of the oma cron variant is less and delta. doesnt look like it will have the evolutionary...

By Jennifer Juno Senior research fellow, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity Adam Wheatley Senior Research Fellow, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Mel Melbourne, Nov 29 The Conversation The emergence of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern, Omicron, has reignited global discussions of vaccine distribution, virus mutation, and immunity against new virus strains.Some experts have suggested the emergence of a new strain could be a result of low levels...

What about omicron gives you that confidence? what part of it? because theres all these mutations which is obviously freaking out -- this is a more mutated virus than i guess was expected this early, correct? >> well, what weve seen is when you get really very, very high levels of virus neutralizing antibody, when we looked at it against the beta variant that came out of south africa last year, or the lambda which had some of the same mutations as omicron, yes, you got a decrease in virus neutra...

What is it about this variant that youve seen so far that has everybody so alarmed that the other variants weve had in between, delta and this one -- delta alarmed folks. this one alarmed folks. lambda and mu, for instance, hasnt. what makes omicron so concerning to you? >> right now what we have is we have the window into the mutations that are in this new variant, and they are troublesome in the fact that there are about 32 or more variants in that very important spike protein of the virus, wh...

Premise. i think a couple of key points over this next week or so -- we are going to know whether antibodies to our vaccine and the pfizer people, the moderna people, the j&j people will know if the antibodies to these different vaccines, especially after boosting are sufficient in order to neutralize the omicron vary yachbt. those are studies that are done in the laboratory, even with the omicron variant virus itself or with the pseudovirus constructs thats made. wool know that fairly quickly. ...

Variant. those variants were partially resistant to the vaccines, by no means completely. with individuals that have toledoses of mrna im sayses, im -- immunizations, im hopeful the vaccines will work well. well know that by the end of this coming week and after that were looking at the vaccines the way you do it is you actually measure the antibody to the vaccine, either an experimental animal or in people who have been immunized and you see how well it neutralizes the virus or a pseudo virus v...

The extent to which vaccines will be effective against this. i dont think theres panic on that front yet. third, you know, the other thing about these variants that have mutations in the spike protein, similar ones that weve seen before the b-13531 out of south africa, the lambda out of south america, those never really went anywhere. so its not as if just because you have mutations in the spike protein that it spreads all over the world. the fact that weve identified this in hong kong and austr...

To collect the data. >> youre absolutely right, arthel, theres a lot we dont know. we will learn a lot more even by the end of this week, i think well know a lot more. here are the questions that im asking. number one, is this -- does this produce more severe disease than the variants that weve been experiencing, predominantly alpha and delta in the united states. i dont think so. it looks like it may be about the same. were hearing some reports of mild disease, other reports out of south africa...