focusIR May 2024 Investor Webinar: Blue Whale, Kavango, Taseko Mines & CQS Natural Resources. Catch up with the webinar here.
Also taken from the UCL article:
"For the study, researchers added samples of Alpha (B.1.1.7 lineage) to lab-grown lung cells – to mimic the cells infected by the virus in the body. Scientists then measured how much the virus grew and assessed whether the innate immune system was activated (or to what degree) by measuring the amount of interferon produced.
Researchers observed that the levels of interferon produced during Alpha infection were far lower than all earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants, which had principally seen mutations to the ‘spike’ protein."
I know this might seem like old news, but it's interesting to see that SARS-CoV-2 evolved to get even better at evading our innate immune repsonse, and has conitnued to do so: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/dec/dominant-alpha-variant-evolved-evade-our-innate-immune-system
From the article:
"“We found that that the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant had adapted to avoid triggering our defensive frontline innate immune response much better than the first wave viruses. We discovered it does this by making more of the virus proteins that can disable the innate immune system. These proteins are called N, Orf6 and Orf9b and are known as innate immune antagonists."
This was posted before (apologies - can't remember who) Antagonism of Type I Interferon by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7757701/
"SARS-CoV-2 is an enveloped virus, containing a positive-sense single-strand ~30?kb genome RNA, which encodes 16 nonstructural proteins (nsp1–16), 4 structural proteins [spike (S), envelop (E), membrane (M), and nucleocapsid (N)], and 7 accessory proteins and 8 accessory proteins (ORF3a, ORF3b, ORF6, ORF7a, ORF7b, ORF8, ORF9b, and ORF10) (Fig. 1A). Among them, the nsps are responsible for viral replication, the structural proteins for virion formation, and the accessory proteins for modulation of host response. The accessory proteins facilitate viral infection, but are not essential for viral replication."
As the virus evolves who is to say it won't get better at doing this?
Charts are a measure of sentiment towards a share, that's all. What we can do though is combine this with our research to make informed judgements, as Tony has done, which for me is re-assuring. If you haven't done it yes, learning TA and being able to analyse what is happening to a share price will make you a better investor and can help you to avoid some big mistakes (or spot opportunities).
Will we have to live this way for years?
We have been advised to choose carefully when putting dates in our diary in the run-up to Christmas - but will we have to live with reduced social contacts for years to come?
That's what Prof Whitty is being asked. He says he looks at it over a five-year time frame.
He thinks in about 18 months' time, there'll be a wide range of vaccines as well as treatments like antiviral drugs. At that time, most "heavy lifting" when there's a new variant will be met by medicine, rather than restrictions being put in place.
We've come from a place when we had "absolutely nothing" so we had to rely on measures like social distancing, he says.
We're now in a transition period where a lot can be done with things like boosters but we are stil "not quite in the safer haven" we will be in in future.
Risks will "gradually decrease over time" with each six months better than the previous six months, he says.
He's taken the text from the note and posted in a tweet thread:
*NUMIS NOTE*
SYNAIRGEN (BUY, 990p) Competitor data. Yesterday afternoon, Adagio Therapeutics announced that its monoclonal antibody (ADG20) has dramatically lost potency against the Omicron variant based on pseudovirus neutralisation assays.
GSK and Vir are currently undertaking similar experiments for their recently approved Sotrovimab/Xevudy, which like Adagio has shown promise against individual mutations in Omicron, but may also struggle against all mutations.
As we highlighted recently highly specific monoclonal antibodies, spike vaccines and even pills are placing selective pressure on SARS-CoV-2 and it should not be unexpected that these various treatments will lose efficacy against variants.
Early, broad spectrum treatments like SNG001 that retain efficacy across variants remain urgently needed and we note that with Adagio down 80% yesterday, Synairgen was up 8%.
They don't know a lot, but what they do know worries them: https://twitter.com/Dr_D_Robertson/status/1466807346487869445