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A new approach to a Covid-19 nasal vaccine shows early promise | CNN

Published

2 years ago

April 6, 2023

A new approach to a Covid-19 nasal vaccine shows early promise | CNN

CNN
—

Scientists in Germany say they’ve been in a position to make a nasal vaccine that may shut down a Covid-19 an infection within the nostril and throat, the place the virus will get its first foothold within the physique.

In experiments in hamsters, two doses of the vaccine – which is made with a reside however weakened type of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 – blocked the virus from copying itself within the animals’ higher airways, attaining “sterilizing immunity” and stopping sickness, a long-sought purpose of the pandemic.

Though this vaccine has a number of extra hurdles to clear earlier than it will get to a physician’s workplace or drug retailer, different nasal vaccines are in use or are nearing the end line in medical trials.

China and India each rolled out vaccines given by the nasal tissues final fall, although it’s not clear how effectively they could be working. Research on the effectiveness of those vaccines have but to be revealed, leaving a lot of the world to wonder if this strategy to safety actually works in folks.

The US has reached one thing of a stalemate with Covid-19. Even with the darkest days of the pandemic behind us, tons of of People are nonetheless dying day by day because the an infection continues to simmer within the background of our return to regular life.

So long as the virus continues to unfold amongst folks and animals, there’s at all times the potential for it mutate right into a extra contagious or extra damaging model of itself. And whereas Covid infections have change into manageable for many wholesome folks, they could nonetheless pose a hazard to susceptible teams such because the aged and immunocompromised.

Researchers hope next-generation Covid-19 vaccines, which purpose to close down the virus earlier than it ever will get an opportunity to make us sick and finally forestall the unfold of an infection, may make our latest resident respiratory an infection much less of a risk.

A technique scientists try to do this is by boosting mucosal immunity, beefing up immune defenses within the tissues that line the higher airways, proper the place the virus would land and start to contaminate our cells.

It’s a bit like stationing firefighters beneath the smoke alarm in your own home, says research creator Emanuel Wyler, a scientist on the Max Delbruck Heart for Molecular Medication within the Helmholtz Affiliation in Berlin.

The immunity that’s created by photographs works all through the physique, but it surely resides primarily within the blood. Which means it could take longer to mount a response.

“If they’re already on web site, they’ll instantly remove the hearth, but when they’re like 2 miles away, they first must drive there, and by that point, one-third of the home is already in full flames,” Wyler stated.

Mucosal vaccines are additionally higher at priming a unique sort of first responder than injections do. They do a greater job of summoning IgA antibodies, which have 4 arms to seize onto invaders as a substitute of the 2 arms that the y-shaped IgG antibodies have. Some scientists assume IgA antibodies could also be much less choosy about their targets than IgG antibodies, which makes them higher outfitted to take care of new variants.

The brand new nasal vaccine takes a brand new strategy to a really outdated thought: weakening a virus so it’s not a risk after which giving it to folks so their immune techniques can study to acknowledge and battle it off. The primary vaccines utilizing this strategy date to the 1870s, towards anthrax and rabies. Again then, scientists weakened the brokers they had been utilizing with warmth and chemical substances.

The researchers manipulated the genetic materials within the virus to make it more durable for cells to translate. This method, referred to as codon pair deoptimization, hobbles the virus so it may be proven to the immune system with out making the physique sick.

“You would think about studying a textual content … and each letter is a unique font, or each letter is a unique measurement, then the textual content is way more durable to learn. And that is principally what we do in codon pair deoptimization,” Wyler stated.

Within the hamster research, which had been revealed Monday within the journal Nature Microbiology, two doses of the reside however weakened nasal vaccine created a a lot stronger immune response than both two doses of an mRNA-based vaccine or one which makes use of an adenovirus to ferry the vaccine directions into cells.

The researchers assume the reside weakened vaccine most likely labored higher as a result of it intently mimics the method of a pure an infection.

The nasal vaccine additionally previews all the coronavirus for the physique, not simply its spike proteins like present Covid-19 vaccines do, so the hamsters had been in a position to make immune weapons towards a wider vary of targets.

As promising as all this sounds, vaccine consultants say warning is warranted. This vaccine nonetheless has to move extra exams earlier than it’s prepared to be used, however they are saying the outcomes look encouraging.

“They did a really good job. That is clearly a reliable and considerate group that did this work, and spectacular within the scope of what they did. Now it simply must be repeated,” maybe in primates and definitely in people earlier than it may be broadly used, stated Dr. Greg Poland, who designs vaccines on the Mayo Clinic. He was not concerned within the new analysis.

The research started in 2021, earlier than the Omicron variant was round, so the vaccine examined in these experiments was made with the unique pressure of the coronavirus. Within the experiments, after they contaminated animals with Omicron, the reside however weakened nasal vaccine nonetheless carried out higher than the others, however its skill to neutralize the virus was diminished. Researchers assume it would want an replace.

It additionally must be examined in people, and Wyler says they’re engaged on that. The scientists have partnered with a Swiss firm referred to as RocketVax to begin section I medical trials.

Different vaccines are additional alongside, however the progress has been “sluggish and halting,” Poland stated. Teams engaged on these vaccines are struggling to lift the steep prices of getting a brand new vaccine to market, they usually’re doing it in a setting the place folks are likely to assume the vaccine race has been gained and performed.

In actuality, Poland stated, we’re removed from that. All it could take is one other Omicron-level shift within the evolution of the virus, and we might be again at sq. one, with no efficient instruments towards the coronavirus.

“That’s silly. We must be growing a pan-coronavirus vaccine that does induce mucosal immunity and that’s long-lived,” he stated.

At the very least 4 nasal vaccines for Covid-19 have reached late-stage testing in folks, in accordance with the World Well being Group’s vaccine tracker.

The nasal vaccines in use in China and India depend on innocent adenoviruses to ferry their directions into cells, though effectiveness knowledge for these has not been revealed.

Two different nasal vaccines are ending human research.

One, a recombinant vaccine that may be produced cheaply in hen eggs, the identical approach many flu vaccines are, is being put by its paces by researchers at Mount Sinai in New York Metropolis.

One other, just like the German vaccine, makes use of a reside however weakened model of the virus. It’s being developed by an organization referred to as Codagenix. Outcomes of these research, which had been carried out in South America and Africa, might come later this yr.

The German group says it’s eagerly looking forward to the Codagenix knowledge.

“They are going to be essential with a view to know the place whether or not this sort of try is principally promising or not,” Wyler stated.

They’ve purpose to fret. Respiratory infections have proved to be powerful targets for inhaled vaccines.

FluMist, a reside however weakened type of the flu virus, works moderately effectively in youngsters however doesn’t assist adults as a lot. The reason being considered that adults have already got immune reminiscence for the flu, and when the virus is injected into the nostril, the vaccine largely boosts what’s already there.

Nonetheless, a number of the most potent vaccines such because the vaccine towards measles, mumps and rubella use reside attenuated viruses, so it’s a promising strategy.

One other consideration is that reside vaccines can’t be taken by everybody. Individuals with very compromised immunity are sometimes cautioned towards utilizing reside vaccines as a result of even these very weakened viruses could also be dangerous for them.

“Though it’s strongly attenuated, it’s nonetheless an actual virus,” Wyler stated, so it must be used rigorously.

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Trump tariffs are proving ‘big headache’ for tech giants, says Foxconn

Published

31 minutes ago

March 14, 2025

Press Room

Trump tariffs are proving ‘big headache’ for tech giants, says Foxconn

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The US government’s tariff announcements have become a “big headache” for technology companies such as iPhone maker Apple and cloud service provider Amazon, their manufacturing partner Foxconn said on Friday, in a rare public admission of the disruption caused by President Donald Trump’s erratic trade policy.

“The issue of tariffs is something that is giving the CEOs of our customers a big headache now,” chief executive Young Liu told investors on an earnings call. “Judging by the attitude and the approach we see the US government taking towards tariffs, it is very, very hard to predict how things will develop over the next year. So we can only concentrate on doing well what we can control.”

Liu said the company’s customers were “one after another” hatching plans for co-operating with Foxconn on manufacturing in the US. He declined to give details as those plans were not yet finalised, but said there should be “more and more” manufacturing in the US.

The world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer assembles the vast majority of the world’s iPhones for Apple and also makes a broad range of other electronics products, including laptops, servers, robots, medical equipment and electric vehicles.

Foxconn itself is affected by Washington’s attempts to force more manufacturing to move onshore. The lion’s share of its manufacturing capacity is in China — recently hit by an additional 10 per cent US tariff — India and Vietnam, which are both likely targets for Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs. Foxconn is also building what it said last October would be the world’s largest factory for Nvidia Blackwell servers in Mexico, where Trump has slapped a 25 per cent tariff on its exports to the US.

Foxconn forecast its information and communication products business, dominated by its contract work for Apple, would be stable this year. “But under the uncertainties related to geopolitics and tariffs, manufacturing will face challenges and demand might also suffer,” Liu said, adding that the company would work closely with customers to adjust its global footprint.

But the Taiwanese group gave a bullish outlook for AI servers. The company’s server assembly revenue increased 78 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared with the same period a year earlier, and it said it expected the AI server business to more than double in the current quarter.

Liu said he did not share concerns that cloud service providers might cut spending this year. He said the success of Chinese AI company DeepSeek in developing a large language model with smaller hardware investment was likely to encourage larger numbers of medium-sized companies to develop their own LLMs, further boosting server demand.

Driven by that strong growth, cloud and networking products would account for half the company’s revenue this year, overtaking the consumer electronics business, which has long weighed on Foxconn’s margins with its low-margin smartphone assembly operations.

Foxconn reported a surprise 13 per cent year-on-year drop in net profit for the fourth quarter. Net earnings slid to NT$46.3bn (US$1.4bn) in the three months to the end of December, but the decrease was due to a drop in non-operating income, while operating profit increased by 32 per cent.

News

Judges threatened with impeachment, bombs for ruling against Trump agenda

Published

1 hour ago

March 14, 2025

Press Room

Judges threatened with impeachment, bombs for ruling against Trump agenda

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy listen as President Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 4.

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Federal judges who have ruled against the Trump administration this year are confronting a wave of threats, potentially compromising their personal safety and the independence of the judiciary.

The sister of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett received a bomb threat earlier this month, and lower court judges who hit pause on some of President Trump’s efforts to dismantle federal agencies and programs have been singled out on social media.

Republican lawmakers close to the president even have proposed impeachment proceedings against a few of those judges, who serve for life.

Elon Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency making cuts to federal agencies, himself has repeatedly posted on social media about impeaching judges who delay or block parts of Trump’s agenda.

Efforts to undermine the judiciary come at the same time the Trump administration has moved to fire lawyers inside the Justice Department and the Pentagon, penalize private law firms who represented clients Trump does not like, and to back away from participation in the activities of the American Bar Association.

President Trump signed an executive order banning the government from hiring a law firm that represented Hillary Clinton's campaign in the 2016 presidential race.

Judge Richard Sullivan, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, said in his lifetime four federal judges have been killed in retaliation for their work on the bench.

“This is not hypothetical,” Sullivan, who leads a Judicial Conference panel on security issues, told reporters in a news conference this week. The Judicial Conference is a representative body of federal judges that frames policies for courts. “It’s real. It’s happened before. We have to be certain that it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

The Federal Judges Association, a voluntary group of more than 1,000 judges across the nation, said judiciary plays a “critical role in preserving democracy and a law-abiding society.”

“Judges must be able to do their jobs without fear of violence or undue influence,” the group said in a written statement to NPR.

An illustration of a woman is hunched over behind a giant gavel as a judge looms in the background.

Early threats

One thing stands out to legal experts: these attacks on judges are coming at a very early stage in the legal process — often, before the Supreme Court weighs in as the final decider.

“We have a system of justice that allows for appeals,” Judge Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, told reporters this week. “That’s typically the way it works. Impeachment is not and shouldn’t be a short-circuiting of that process. And so it is concerning if impeachment is used in a way that is designed to do just that.”

Only 15 federal judges have faced impeachment, mostly for allegations of wrongdoing such as bribery, corruption, or perjury, in the past couple of centuries.

Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the odds of a successful judicial impeachment are pretty low, and to remove a judge from the bench would require a two-thirds vote from the Senate.

“The more that people like Elon Musk are putting on the wall the idea that it’s appropriate to attack these judges for nothing more than ruling against the federal government, the more that we’re normalizing what really are in the main very serious threats to judicial independence,” Vladeck said.

The Department of Justice stands in the early morning hours in 2019 in Washington, D.C.

“Jeopardize the Rule of Law”

But Paul Grimm, who spent 26 years as a federal judge, said even the threat of impeachment can amount to intimidation.

“And if you try to intimidate judges, if that’s your goal, so that they do not do their constitutional duty, then you jeopardize the rule of law,” said Grimm, who leads the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School. “And without the rule of law, every liberty and every right that we cherish as Americans is vulnerable.”

Grimm said he worries a lot about online posts that display the home and work addresses of judges and their adult children, a step that he said “crosses the line.”

Nearly five years ago, an angry litigant shot and killed the son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas in New Jersey.

And in 2023, a state court judge in Maryland was gunned down in his driveway.

Attacks over rulings

The U.S. Marshals say threats against federal judges have doubled in recent years, according to the most recent data. And those threats have been directed at both Democrat and Republican judges.

Justice Barrett came under withering criticism this month from some right-wing political commentators, after she voted alongside Chief Justice John Roberts and the liberals on the high court against Trump’s effort to freeze foreign aid.

Lower court judges have faced online attacks for their early rulings on Musk’s DOGE team, efforts to restore government web pages, and the freeze on foreign aid.

The Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.

The Marshals protect judges, but they also report to the U.S. Attorney General, not to the courts themselves. That’s got some members of Congress on alert.

“A judge’s security is dependent in many ways on the Marshals Service who the president appoints to protect the judges, and if a president doesn’t like a decision that’s coming from a judge, theoretically they could pull their security,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, said at a congressional hearing this month.

The administration has already yanked protection this year from former military and national security officials who disagreed with Trump in his first term.

Swalwell said Congress should consider giving judges their own security force — one that’s independent from the White House.