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Dimitrios Kouvelas, professor of clinical pharmacology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, raises three big questions about new technological vaccines such as that from Pfizer, as he considers Russian Sputnik V, which is an old technology, safe and ineffective. serious secondary.
With the COVID-19 pandemic showing its ‘teeth’, the global community is eagerly awaiting the vaccine that will rid the pandemic. Millions of people around the world are sick and over a million have died, and countries like Russia are ready to launch the vaccine.
The scientific community is studying the two types of ready-to-use vaccines, such as the Russian Sputnik V created by the internationally renowned Gamaleya institute, which is referred to as the “conventional type”, and the Pfizer vaccine, as well as Moderna, which are characterized as “genetic type” vaccines.
Professor Kouvelas speaking with Sputnik Hellas, explained that the Russian vaccine is an old technology “as we expected” and that its advantage is that it “does not expect any serious side effects”.
“Sputnik V is a vaccine of old technology, that is to say of what we have always done. They used two different types of viruses, which are harmless to humans. But when you put them together, they give what we call chimeric products, ”he explained.
“So they make antibodies that also catch SAR-CoV-2. This is the knowledge we have about the Sputnik V vaccine, ”Kouvelas explained.
Professor AUTh pointed out that scientists expected such vaccines – that is, they have “one or two viruses or pieces of viruses that we would synthesize and place in the final preparation without the genetic material. of the virus, ”he said.
The advantage of Sputnik V
“The advantage of the vaccine is that we know what it is, so we all feel safer with such a vaccine. We do not expect any serious side effects from these vaccines, ”explained the professor.
“The vaccines that we have been using for years have no side effects because they are of high purity, they are very well made, some may just not respond as expected. They are the most vulnerable, like a person taking cortisone because they have an autoimmune disease (cortisone suppresses the immune system), ”continued the professor.
“So if we give him a vaccine, he won’t be stimulated because we keep him immunosuppressed. But this person is more likely to get sick. Or the elderly. So what do we do? So for them we want collective immunity, to vaccinate the rest to protect people who will not be able to get vaccinated. This is our approach to conventional vaccines, ”he said.
Kouvelas said that this technology is also the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“The Commission’s decision not to supply the Russian Sputnik V vaccine is incomprehensible”
What happens to the Pfizer vaccine?
On the other hand, the Pfizer vaccine is of a different technology, Mr. Kouvelas himself saying that it is a product that he cannot qualify as a “vaccine” in the classic sense of the term.
“Pfizer made a product, I can’t really describe it because it’s not even a vaccine in the classic sense, it’s something completely new,” he said.
This product is essentially a synthetic and artificial coronavirus RNA, an RNA base sequence which, once given to the body, will enter and be integrated into our cells ”, continued the professor.
“It will start to function as messenger RNA and will synthesize proteins in our own cells and our own proteins will be produced in the antigenic information, which can stimulate the production of antibodies in our body,” he said.
The antibodies that will be created will not infect any of our organs, but they will be there and they will wait for a possible invasion of the coronavirus and they will have the possibility of destroying it, ”Kouvelas described.
The professor adds that the great advantage of this method is that it does not use foreign proteins and therefore does not cause allergies or other side effects.
“Theoretically, this is ideal,” said Kouvelas, who pointed out that over the years scientists have encountered significant obstacles in transporting RNA without a “vehicle” into the human body.
“Suddenly, that is to say very quickly and without prior knowledge, the two companies (Pfizer and Moderna) come to say to each other ‘we have solved the problems that we had'”, underlined Kouvelas, adding that until present “if we wanted for experimental reasons, we used viruses that we modified for the genome we needed or certain phages (viruses for germs) and we put the germ to make the protein we needed.
“Now they’re saying ‘we’ve figured out how to put it in cells with no vector, no virus, something harmful, which we don’t know exactly what does.’ In other words, they did not give us the information, the scientific literature, how they did it ”, underlined the professor.
The three question marks
The first big problem, Kouvelas says, is instability. The second problem is that they have passed the artificial RNA which will then cross the membrane, while the third has to do with the cells.
“The first difficulty is instability. They said they keep it at -70 degrees, but when it gets injected into our blood, how is it destroyed? Why don’t white blood cells “eat” it? Asked the professor.
“The second ‘wall’ that we had to overcome is how that RNA will cross the cytoplasmic membrane because the RNA didn’t cross the membrane and we needed a virus, now they don’t use it and even manage to cross it, ”he explained. , adding “We also don’t know how they do this.”
“And the third big problem is how do I target the cells that need to ‘talk’. Which made it stable when it got into specific cells – not the one in front, but where it’s needed. These are the three big questions that companies say they have overcome, ”Kouvelas said.
Regarding the intention of the state to set up vaccination centers, Kouvelas said the opposite and considers that the vaccination should be done by the personal doctor or health visitors.
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