Vulpes View26 Feb 2021 20:15
Posted by chillpill on the other site. If this view from Vulpes is based on their knowledge of the current state of progress in Scancell then this is hope mews indeed.
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The Vulpes view:
There has been significant excitement in both the media and the scientific community over the new approach from Scancell on targeting the Covid virus. The stock has performed spectacularly well in the last few months and we wanted to go into some depth as to the possible advantages of the Scancell approach, as these could deliver significant returns for our investors.
Professor Peter James writes, “Currently, virtually all of the vaccines developed to date target a protein on the outside of the viral capsid called the Spike protein (S). The function of this protein is to bind a receptor on the outside of cells (called ACE2) this then causes the virus to be taken into the cell. Once inside, the virus can use the cell's machinery to replicate and subsequently kill the cell allowing the release of thousands of new virus particles. The Spike protein is the most easily accessible for immune cells to see and bind to, and to allow the virus to be killed. However, it is fairly easily mutated since its function is simply to bind the receptor and so does not have such a critical reliance on overall structure. This flexibility is now a cause for worry since by changing its sequence it may be able to avoid detection by the immune cells that were elicited by the current vaccines.
Scancell’s strategy is to target this S protein and a second protein inside the viral membrane called the nucleocapsid protein, N. This protein is responsible for a series of critical steps in the viral lifecycle including packaging the viral genome, directing assembly of the virus and eliciting viral escape from the cell by budding. Since it has many functions, its structure is very fixed and it cannot mutate very much without losing function and killing the virus. This protein is found in many Coronaviruses and the sequence is pretty much invariant. By targeting two proteins, the chances of resistance to vaccination by mutation is dramatically reduced and should provide protection against future mutations. Also, it has the added benefit of probably being effective against other Coronaviruses.
The intention is to induce both durable T cell responses and virus neutralising antibodies to give a more potent and longer lasting response that is likely to be able to deal with new mutations arising in the future.”
Vulpes originally invested in Scancell for the brilliant cancer immunology, however it appears increasingly possible that their Covid vaccine, named Covidity, may produce another significant pillar of value of our investors. Even better is that such is the enthusiasm for the project the UK government has given he company an Innovate UK grant to cover most of much of the development. Human trials are due to start in the coming weeks and we should have early results by the beginning of
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