One of the biggest goals of many researchers employed via life science recruitment is to make a discovery that has the potential to change the world and be recognised and immortalised for their achievements and contributions to the world.
Arguably the single most prestigious award in this regard is the Nobel Prize in Physiology Or Medicine, which is awarded to the biggest medical discovery of the year, which can range from new surgical techniques, the discovery of new bacteria or a radical world-changing treatment for a disease.
Established from the will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the prize has been awarded since 1904 and its winners from part of the bedrock for how collective life sciences knowledge has evolved.
Here are some of the biggest discoveries this century, from 2000 to the present day.
One of the complexities of the Nobel Prize is it works under the assumption that a single person made a single major discovery, which fitsha the scientific landscape of the 19th century but by the 21st century many scientists are working either together or in parallel on discoveries.
One of the biggest examples of this was Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which was developed beyond Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR, itself the winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physics) first by Paul Lauterbur before being soon refined by Sir Peter Mansfield.
The principle was first proven by an experiment by Mr Lauterbur, but he had difficulties getting journals and his own university to take his finding seriously, whilst Sir Peter Mansfield’s refined ‘slice selection’ MRI method made it faster and developed the first full-body MRI scanner.
Because the MRI is so vital to modern diagnosis, and the system as we know it couldn’t exist without both discoveries, the Nobel Prize went to both of them.
The 2008 Nobel Prize went to two profoundly important discoveries that had major implications for public health. Half of the award went to Harald Zur Hausen, a German virologist who proved a connection between human papillomaviruses (HPV) and cervical cancer from his initial theory in 1976.
The other half of the award was split between two French virologists, Ms Barré-Sinoussi and Mr Mongtagnier, who both made the discovery in 1982 as part of the Pasteur Institute that the then-new disease AIDS was caused by a retrovirus, later named HIV.
The circadian rhythm, sometimes known colloquially as the ‘body clock’, is a fundamental innate internal process that shapes how the human body operates every 24 hours, from the moment they wake up throughout their entire night’s sleep.
Mr Hall, Mr Rosbash and Mr Young were critical parts of the discovery of how the circadian rhythm actually worked at a molecular level, including the development of proteins, synchronisation activity between different cells and the discovery of the clock genes in fruit flies.
This collection of discoveries helped to shed light on the molecular basis for a very human pattern of behaviour.
Canary Wharf is synonymous with high-rise office buildings and some of the country’s leading businesses, but it is now establishing itself as the UK’s centre for life sciences.
Earlier this week, Kadans Science Partner joined forces with Canary Wharf Group to create a new 750,000-square foot wet lab at London’s Canary Wharf.
This is the first phase of the plan to build a world-leading centre for life sciences at the site, and will be Europe’s largest commercial lab building when complete.
The facility, which is expected to be ready in 2026, will be spread across 22 storeys, with lab space on every floor.
Chief executive officer for Canary Wharf Group Shobi Khan said the group has been working on a health and life sciences hub for the last three years.
“We are creating a world class building that will provide state of the art laboratory, office and innovation space for some of the most exciting and fast-growing businesses in the health and life sciences sector,” it was added.
Kadans has experience in the development and management of life sciences buildings, creating multi-let labs and office buildings.
When complete, the building will be available for small and medium-sized enterprises, academics, and global pharmaceutical and healthcare companies.
Michel Leemhuis, chief executive officer of Kadans Science Partner, stated the building will be “the catalyst for a new world-leading life sciences cluster and ecosystem in the UK capital”.
Canary Wharf was chosen as the location for the facility thanks to its connectivity. The Jubilee Line, DLR and, soon, the Elizabeth Line will serve the area, while London City Airport is just 15 minutes away.
Mr Leemhuis noted Canary Wharf, therefore, provides “access to a huge talent pool and numerous funding partners from its existing tenant base”.
Additionally, it is home to a considerable number of professionals, as a result of newly developed apartments, five kilometres of boardwalks, and 20 acres of outdoor space.
“We have homes for every income level,” stated Mr Khan, adding: “[This] will enable researchers and their colleagues to live close by.”
This building could help the government reach its goals to accelerate genomic research across the UK.
Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Social Care revealed the UK government, Welsh and Scottish governments and Northern Ireland Assembly agreed to better genomic testing and clinical trials.
It hopes this will improve cancer diagnosis and treatment; boost early detection of disease through newborn genome sequency; strengthen collaboration on disease sequencing; maximise investment and improve teamwork among genomics research across the UK; and increase access to clinical trials and improve feedback to the NHS, as a means of directly bettering patient care.
Secretary of state for health and social care Sajid Javid said: “The pandemic has highlighted the importance of our booming UK life sciences sector.”
He added: “By harnessing the power and innovation of genomic research, we can reduce diagnosis time and use cutting-edge treatments for some of the biggest health challenges we face.”
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Over the last couple of years, the life sciences and medical industries have been focused on creating treatments or developing vaccines, for Covid-19. The latest study from the US has now shown a nasal spray could be the most effective therapy against the illness to date.
Researchers at Northwestern University, University of Washington, and Washington University at St Louis have been working hard on a new protein-based antiviral nasal spray to treat or even prevent Covid-19 infections, with their findings published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
It works by disrupting the virus’ ability to enter cells, with experiments on mice determining that the treatment reduced symptoms of the illness or stopped the animals from being infected entirely. The top protein neutralised the coronavirus, as well as all tested SARS-CoV-2 variants. This is one of the only antibody treatments that has been able to achieve this.
Michael Jewett from Northwestern University led the study, with David Baker and David Veesler from the University of Washington School of Medicine and Michael S Diamond at WashU supporting him.
Jewitt stated that common antibody therapies typically only block one of the three binding domains of the spike protein; however, this treatment blocks all three.
“The interaction between the spike protein and our antiviral is among the tightest interactions known in biology. When we put the spike protein and our antiviral therapeutic in a test tube together for a week, they stayed connected and never fell apart,” he explained.
So far, the success of some treatments against Covid-19 has been affected due to different variants emerging over time. However, the minibinders in the nasal spray were able to work against the latest Omicron variant, and scientists are confident it will continue to be effective against future varieties as it prevents the variants from binding to the ACE2 receptor.
“To enter the body, the spike protein and ACE2 receptor engage in a handshake. Our antiviral blocks this handshake and, as a bonus, has a resistant to viral escape,” stated Jewitt.
Other advantages of the newly developed nasal spray are that it is inexpensive to develop; it is stable in high heat and does not require extreme refrigeration; and it could potentially be self-administered, which means medical professionals are not required to give the treatment.
The therapy is so promising that it is being advanced towards Phase I human clinical trials to treat or prevent Covid-19 in the future.
This comes after the government asked for volunteers to come forward for a new Covid-19 drug trial. Merck, Sharp, and Dohme (MSD) have developed a pill called Molnupiravir, which was given a license by UK regulators in November and officially launched the following month, BBC News reported.
Anyone vulnerable to Covid-19 has been urged to participate in the trial, including people with underlying health conditions and those over the age of 50, as this will help determine how the NHS can best use the drug.
Health secretary Sajid Javid said antiviral drug studies “help us to learn more about medicines which could save thousands of lives”.
As more treatments and vaccinations are developed in the fight against Covid-19, the demand for people looking for life science vacancies is likely to remain high for some time.
A key area of medical research in recent years has been to find drugs that can beat back antibiotic-resistant superbugs, something that may be about to bear fruit in the form of two new medications set to be used in England.
The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has said antibacterials cefiderocol and ceftazidime–avibactam could become the first drugs to be accredited for use under a new subscription-style payment model, where the makers will get a fixed annual fee to cover development costs instead of payments per drug used.
This is a model adopted by the government with the aim of incentivising companies to develop vital drugs to help with rare but potentially deadly problems such as superbug infection, rather than just focusing on more profitable medications.
NICE observed that “the lack of new antimicrobials being developed and the growing threat posed by antimicrobial resistance” is a problem that up until now has had little research. It noted that in 2020, only 41 anti-antimicrobial drugs went through clinical trials, compared with around 1,800 immuno-oncology treatments.
The development of such drugs will be vital to prevent a scenario in which many forms of invasive surgery and other treatments where antibiotics are commonly used would become unsafe, due to the high risk of bugs that have evolved immunity to them.
NHS commercial medicines director Blake Dark commented: “This is an important step in our world-leading approach to incentivise innovation in antimicrobial drugs and the battle against drug-resistant infections.”
In January 2020, the World Health Organization listed the issue of antibiotic resistance among its 13 health challenges of the decade.
The body said a combination of factors such as the unregulated use of antibiotics, poor hygiene and a lack of access to affordable high quality medicines has created a “terrifying brew” that threatens to take humanity back to a pre-antibiotics age.
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One of the most fascinating rapidly growing fields of life science recruitment is the evolution of technologies that make precision medicine a possibility that can reduce harm and save lives.
To understand precision medicine and its benefits, however, we need to explore the concept in relation to what has in some circles been retroactively named “imprecise” medicine.
Interestingly enough, precision medicine in concept is not new; in the early days of prescription medicine, there was a distinction between extemporaneous prescriptions written for a specific persona and ailment and a more general remedy.
However, the difference between precision medicine and prescriptions is in the fundamental treatment of patients; whilst prescriptions rely on a one-drug-fits-all model, with alternatives for people who do not respond well to a particular medication, PM tailors healthcare interventions for the needs of different people.
This should not be confused with personalised medicine, where medical devices or medications are made specifically to treat a single individual patient, but instead focuses on different subgroups of patients subdivided best on genetic and molecular characteristics, as well as environmental and lifestyle factors.
The potential benefits are substantial for both patients and medical institutions. Customised medical products that factor in individual or subdivided circumstances reduce the risk of harmful interactions of medicines, improve the efficiency of treatments and by extension reduce the cost of healthcare.
It also fundamentally shifts the emphasis of medicine from reactive interventions to particular symptoms to preventative measures to stop a particular negative outcome from occurring. This, by extension, reduces people’s susceptibility to different diseases.
It can also improve the early detection of diseases where intervening only when symptoms start to emerge is too late, and the fundamental approach allows for custom strategies to prevent diseases based on patient need rather than their ability to handle the first-line treatment.
Conversely, it allows for more effective drugs to be prescribed sooner, avoiding the issues seen with certain conditions where a range of different drugs need to be tried to find one effective for a particular patient.
It relies heavily on diagnosis on a molecular level, such as checking for particular biomarkers, as well as genomic tests. This has required not only advanced diagnostics equipment to be developed but also the use of machine learning to interpret the huge amounts of data generated.
Artificial intelligence has already seen use in cardiovascular precision medicine as well as for clinical trials, with a study suggesting that machine learning had a 76 percent accuracy rate in predicting the outcomes of clinical trials.
This could potentially reduce or entirely remove entirely many of the trial-and-error inefficiencies of drug discovery and clinical trials, which are, in part, the reason why many medicines took a very long time to be approved.
There is a wealth of fascinating research in the field of precision medicine, primarily on the diagnostics front, such as a combination of spectrometry and machine learning to enable real-time imaging of the effects of medication in the body, a discovery believed to be impossible but one with considerable potential.
There are as many aspects to life science recruitment as there are to the broad world of life sciences, but a major aspect of the field is to take new scientific and medical discoveries and adapt them for use in alternative fields.
This often takes the form of drug repositioning, where medication intended for a specific purpose turns out to be effective in a very different field, such as sildenafil and thalidomide.
This is also the reason why a machine used to recognise different types of pastry products was used to detect cancer, and why a genetic engineering technique that could change the world of medicine has first been applied to make more nutritious tomatoes.
A year after Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing the CRISPR technique for precisely changing the DNA of animals, plants, and microorganisms, one of its first publicly available applications was in agriculture.
Japanese startup, Sanatech Seed, used this technology to develop a version of the Sicilian Rouge tomato that had been modified. This reduced levels of a GABA-breaking enzyme, meaning that the tomatoes in question have five times the normal amount.
The neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) inhibits signals between nerve connections, which has been linked by some researchers to a feeling of calm, reduced stress, and better sleep, although to what extent is up for debate.
Initially, Sanatech Seed sold the seedlings to farmers that wanted them, eventually receiving 4,200 orders, and whilst the initial plan was to sell it as puree, the number of requests producers received meant that they started to sell tomatoes ahead of their planned schedule.
This makes these tomatoes the first-ever foods edited with CRISPER to go on public sale, with the second being gene-edited fish that grow larger than normal specimens due to leptin and myostatin disruption.
When it comes to life science recruitment during a very strong period for medical businesses in the UK, there are a lot of options for ambitious, hard-working graduates. These include large establishments, smaller specialist firms and a growing wave of startups.
Innovation, technology and disruptive thinking are at the core of startup businesses in general, but in the life sciences sector, this needs to be backed up by extensive research and a collaborative approach to your ideas and technology.
Here are some top tips when setting up or working for a startup in the life sciences sector, with examples of both successful and less successful firms.
The first step of nearly all startups, particularly those that use lean methodology is to identify needs in a particular sector that have not been met. This was the case with many famous startup successes such as Airbnb and Uber.
However, with questions as complex as those found in the healthcare world, it is also important to ask why these issues have not been solved yet, and do thorough research into currently used solutions for the problem that has been identified.
It may turn out that a solution is already in place and would thus require a demonstrably better product to disrupt the current market, or that there are current technological or knowledge gaps that make the proposed solution impossible to implement.
Take, for example, OrCam, a startup that uses smart camera technology to describe to people with visual impairments what they are unable to see, reading information and describing it through audio feedback.
One of the biggest mistakes made in the life science startup world is not necessarily a lack of understanding or knowledge of a business, but an unwillingness to learn, listen and have assumptions tested.
Curiosity is a huge virtue of startups and allows them to tailor their solutions for the needs of the healthcare market, as opposed to making assumptions of what people want.
This was one of the primary causes for the failure and subsequent criminal trial against the blood-testing firm Theranos.
Elizabeth Holmes, its CEO and founder attempted to treat MedTech with a similar approach Mark Zuckerberg took to Facebook and Steve Jobs took to Apple, where ideas and ambition are more important than current feasibility.
This led to her making promises that could not be kept due to not understanding the technology involved, which in combination with a willingness to lie and defraud led to the company collapsing and Ms Holmes facing criminal charges.
Tech startups often operate with the principle of “move fast and break things”. This was Facebook’s former model until 2014 and whilst it can sometimes net early results in the technology and software sectors, life science works in a very different way.
For example, do not focus on marketing medical products to consumers. Not only can this break MHRA advertising guidelines for prescription medicines and devices, but misses that the majority of customers interact with healthcare through the NHS, private healthcare providers and healthcare insurance.
Instead, focus on the needs not only of patients but also of doctors, clinical commissioning groups and other stakeholders.
In the world of life science recruitment, many candidates will work at some point with medicines and medical devices, many of which require regulatory approval and a prescription from a medical professional for them to reach patients.
Orders for prescriptions often use the abbreviation Rx (or more rarely the symbol ℞) to represent a prescription in textbooks, official documents and in advertising, but for people who are not doctors and pharmacists, it can be unclear as to what the abbreviation actually means.
The reason for this is that ‘Rx’ does not stand for the word prescription but instead for the Latin word ‘Recipere’, and the reason for this dates back to the very early history of doctors, medicines and the written word.
The division between doctors who diagnose patients and prescribe treatments and pharmacies that dispense medicine has existed since the start of medicine itself, and the prescription started as a simple recipe.
There are initially two types of prescriptions: non-extemporaneous prescriptions and extemporaneous prescriptions.
The former were general recipes used to treat patients with common medical issues of the time, similar to medicines that are available over the counter.
The latter, coming from the Latin phrase ‘ex tempore’ were written on the spot and were often specific to a certain patient. Modern prescriptions follow on from this, although in most cases the pharmacist does not need to mix the medication themselves.
Traditionally, before a modern legal definition of a prescription was established, prescriptions consisted of four parts:
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As the Covid-19 situation gradually moves from a pandemic to what most experts believe will be an endemic situation, the methods of treating the disease are also shifting, with a growing emphasis on medication to help prevent those who catch the virus suffering more symptoms.
While vaccination remains a hot topic for some – not least with the arguments about making this mandatory for NHS staff – the development of new antiviral therapies provide another weapon to effectively fight the disease.
The latest drug being trialled is Molnupiravir. It is made by Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD) and has already been licensed in the UK after successful trials in November aimed at preventing severe disease.
In the latest trial, volunteers are being sought among vaccinated people aged over 50 or with underlying health conditions, who will be given the drug in pill form if they test positive for Covid. This will help establish its effectiveness at this stage in preventing the disease from progressing to a severe stage. Over 4,500 volunteers have signed up, but 6,000 are needed.
Health secretary Sajid Javid appealed for volunteers to “help us to learn more about medicines which could save thousands of lives”.
He added that antiviral medications are “part of our approach as we learn to live with Covid, by preventing the most vulnerable from being hospitalised”, he said.
Pharmaceutical recruitment agencies in the UK may find this is a major area of expansion over the coming years as the focus shifts to tackling an endemic disease in an open society that poses little threat to most, but could be a danger to those whose immune systems are compromised or who are particularly vulnerable.
When the pandemic began, a range of existing medications were tested to establish their potential to counteract the disease. This led to claims – still believed by some – that the anti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin can treat the disease. Others that have been in use have now been withdrawn, including Remdesivir and Eli Lily.
However, other drugs were found to have some beneficial effects and remain in use, the first of these being Dexamethasone, which the UK licensed for this purpose in June 2020.
The process that helped establish the effectiveness of Dexamethasone could enable the pharmaceutics sector to develop more treatments for other conditions, according to Professor Sir Martin Lindsay, the researcher who led the research on the drug.
Professor Lindsay has established a new research organisation called Protas, designed to make it quicker and cheaper to research new treatments for a wide range of conditions.
Protas board member Sir John Bell, who was one of the creators of the Oxford vaccine, said conditions that need more treatments to address them include “heart, lung and respiratory disease, arthritis, cancer, depression and dementia”.
Sanofi has just been announced as the first partner for Protas. Its chief medical officer and global head of development Dietmar Berger said: “We are taking a bold [step] to significantly reduce the cost of some of our clinical trials, focusing on what matters the most for patients, doctors, regulators
In a milestone achievement for xenotransplantation, a man with terminal heart disease received the first-ever genetically engineered heart transplant from a non-human donor.
David Bennett, 57, received the treatment from the University Of Maryland Medical Centre as a last resort after being deemed ineligible to receive a more conventional heart transplant.
This was the first case where a whole pig heart was transplanted into a human without rejection, although pig heart valves have been used for many years, and proved that with the use of genetic modification, an animal heart can function as a human heart without being rejected by the body, a common concern for transplants in general.
After the treatment, undertaken by Bartley P. Griffith, MD, the transplanted heart was not immediately rejected, and Mr Bennett has been doing well whilst being monitored to see if the treatment can help extend his life.
The impact on this case could have a major impact on life science recruitment in the field of genomics and genetic modification, as it highlights a potential solution to shortages in organ donation and a breakthrough for a field of medicine that has faced setback after setback.
Xenotransplantation has been explored for over a century, with attempts to transplant animal organs being first attempted in 1905, although the concept had been explored earlier than this.
The first problem was the concept of organ rejection and as more was understood about how the immune system inherently rejects foreign tissue, scientists stopped focusing as much on it.
This changed in 1954 when Dr Joseph Murray performed the first successful organ transplant with the help of immunosuppressive drugs to avoid rejection.
In 1963, chimpanzee kidneys were transplanted into patients, and whilst only one recipient survived longer than a few weeks, the kidneys showed no sign of rejection, creating a promising future for xenotransplantation.
This hope was crushed by two disastrous heart transplants. The first was a baboon heart transplant to Baby Fae in 1984, which extended her life by 21 days and was caused by a blood type mismatch.
The second, and more tragic case was the case of Purna Saikia, who received a pig heart transplant with no genetic modification by Dr Dhaniram Baruah and died after a week due to multiple infections.
This caused an outcry in India and led to both Dr Baurah and his assistant, Hong Kong surgeon John Ho Kei-Shing to be imprisoned for medical ethics violations and culpable homicide.
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The world of life science recruitment is in an especially fascinating place, with a range of transformations in the fields of pharmacology, MedTech and genomics powered forward with the rise of more advanced technological solutions such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.
One of the more interesting evolutionary tales is that of the wearable health tracker and its progression from a basic step-counting device to one that can detect a whole range of biomarkers and signs of a healthy body which can be used as part of preventative health interventions.
Chronicling the development of the technology that would enable smartwatches to work is somewhat fragmented, as much of the technology used in modern health trackers were invented for often very different purposes.
With that in mind, here is the evolution of wearable health technology and the origins of the technologies that make the field possible.
Arguably the first step towards a health tracker was conceived by Leonardo da Vinci, as designs for an early pedometer were found in his notebooks, although it is unlikely he ever managed to make one.
Mechanical pedometers that worked using a similar mechanism to watches of the day were known to exist by the late 16th century.
Fast forward to the 1960s, and the purpose of the pedometer becomes clear thanks to the work of Dr Iwao Ohya and clock engineer Juri Kato of Yamasa Tokei Keiki.
Dr Ohya was worried that people in Japan were not active enough in the year leading up to the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, and the solution he proposed was that everyone should walk 10,000 steps a day, which would lead to Mr Kato producing with Yamasa the Manpo-Kei – the ten-thousand step-meter.
The device, when it was released in 1965 created a revolution, and whilst it turned out the 10,000 steps number was somewhat arbitrary, it has endured to this very day, with the initial basic mechanical switch replaced with a mix of sensors that have made it more accurate.
Pedometers were the first portable wearable health technology and the basis for which health trackers today are built upon.
Many wearables use a mix of sensors that detect heart rate, blood pressure and galvanic skin response, all three of which were also used as part of criminal investigations as part of the polygraph test.
Often called a lie detector, the three physiological indicators were believed to be the main telltale signs that someone was lying, although in practice the concept is somewhat more controversial in criminology than it is in healthcare.
These basic biometric indicators were first attached to the human body by Polar in the form of wearable heart rate monitors in 1982 and the first-ever wrist-mounted health tracker in 1984, in the form of the Polar Sport Tester PE3000.
This was a gamechanger for athletes, who could now analyse their training data with a system far more advanced than filling out a spreadsheet manually.
One of the key appealing factors of many health trackers is that they have a gamification element, often in the form of setting records that are then broken as well as showcasing progression.
This concept comes from computer games, which would start to produce what would later be known as exertainment as early as 1982, with the Atari-powered Puffer project.
It was an exercise bike that connected to either an Atari 5200 console or an Atari 8-bit computer and would control a game via a combination of pedals and a set of controllers that attached to the handlebars.
It would never be released, and aside from the Joyboard, a balance-based controller for the Atari 2600, it would take until 1986 for Bandai to create the Family Trainer pad, which became known as the Power Pad when the device arrived in North America, licensed by Nintendo.
A concept similar to puffer would arrive in the 1990s in the form of the Exertainment system which provided gamified elements as well as more sophisticated activity tracking.
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The majority of reactions suffered by patients who have just had a vaccination against Covid-19 are not caused by the vaccination, but are the result of anxiety or a mistaken belief that a symptom with another cause could be attributed to the jab, a new study in the US has concluded.
Researchers at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre (BIDMC) in Boston studied 22,000 reports of adverse reactions after a real Covid jab, compared with a similar number who had the placebo.
It found that 35 per cent of placebo jab recipients reported headaches, fever and swelling around the injection point, only 11 per cent less than those getting the real jab. After a second dose, 32 per cent from the placebo group reported these side-effects, against 61 per cent among those with a real Covid vaccine dose.
The researchers concluded that many people had simply associated apparent adverse effects with the vaccine when in fact this was not possible, something they termed the ‘nocebo effect’.
In conclusion, they calculated that the nocebo effect accounted for 76 per cent of first dose side-effects and 52 per cent in the second case, which means that two thirds of symptoms were imagined.
Such news may be particularly encouraging for those working in the area of vaccine development, both for Covid-19 and other diseases, as it demonstrates that concerns about the potential side-effects of vaccination – a key argument of the anti-vax movement – are significantly exaggerated.
Director of the Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter at BIDMC Professor Ted Katchuk noted: “Nonspecific symptoms like headache and fatigue are listed among the most common adverse reactions following Covid-19 vaccination in many information leaflets.”
He added that information of this kind “may cause people to misattribute common daily background sensations as arising from the vaccine or cause anxiety and worry that make people hyper alert to bodily feelings about adverse events”.
Professor Katchuk said warning the public of the potential for the nocebo effect to make patients believe they are suffering from side-affects should be made publicly known, arguing that it will help reduce vaccine hesitancy.
While issues of vaccine hesitancy continue to be a much larger problem in countries like the US and eastern European nations than in the UK, the benefits of this knowledge may extend everywhere.
Further vaccine developments may include a new treatment that can provide enhanced immunity against both Covid and flu, a project that Moderna is now working on.
Moderna CEO Stephane Banchel told the Monday Panel of the World Economic Forum it is possible such a combined jab could be in place by 2023. This would enable patients to receive protection from both diseases simultaneously, providing greater public protection in a world with two endemic respiratory conditions that pose a greater risk in the winter months.
It would also be more convenient, as it would mean patients would only need one appointment and the process of vaccination would not take up as much time or labour.
Mr Banchel also confirmed that the company is working on an Omicron-specific jab and it hopes to be ready to seek regulatory approval for it in March.
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