This is published by a predatory publisher (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI#Controversial_articles" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI#Controversial_articles</a>). According to homozygoat (<a href="https://www.twitch.tv/homozygoat" rel="nofollow">https://www.twitch.tv/homozygoat</a>), it doesn't use real virus (rather, it uses other cells transfected to express some covid proteins), and uses the wrong cell type for the conclusions they try to draw.
User @shusaku refers to MDPI as a "garbage journal". If true, this info should play a bigger part in the discussion here than it currently is
The key finding:<p>> Our findings provide evidence of the spike protein hijacking the DNA damage repair machinery and adaptive immune machinery in vitro. We propose a potential mechanism by which spike proteins may impair adaptive immunity by inhibiting DNA damage repair. <i>Although no evidence has been published that SARS–CoV–2 can infect thymocytes or bone marrow lymphoid cells, our in vitro V(D)J reporter assay shows that the spike protein intensely impeded V(D)J recombination.</i> Consistent with our results, clinical observations also show that the risk of severe illness or death with COVID–19 increases with age, especially older adults who are at the highest risk [22]. This may be because SARS–CoV–2 spike proteins can weaken the DNA repair system of older people and consequently impede V(D)J recombination and adaptive immunity. <i>In contrast, our data provide valuable details on the involvement of spike protein subunits in DNA damage repair, indicating that full–length spike–based vaccines may inhibit the recombination of V(D)J in B cells, which is also consistent with a recent study that a full–length spike–based vaccine induced lower antibody titers compared to the RBD–based vaccine [28].</i><p>> <i>This suggests that the use of antigenic epitopes of the spike as a SARS–CoV–2 vaccine might be safer and more efficacious than the full–length spike.</i> Taken together, we identified one of the potentially important mechanisms of SARS–CoV–2 suppression of the host adaptive immune machinery. <i>Furthermore, our findings also imply a potential side effect of the full–length spike–based vaccine.</i> This work will improve the understanding of COVID–19 pathogenesis and provide new strategies for designing more efficient and safer vaccines.<p>In vitro findings are obviously not as compelling as in vivo findings, but it sounds like this issue is worthy of further investigation. It's a bit disconcerting to learn that the spike protein expressed by vaccines administered to over a billion people might be implicated in the impairment of adaptive immunity.<p>All mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) and the adenovirus vector vaccines (AstraZeneca, J&J, etc.) express the full-length spike protein.
This is one of the more accessible and straightforward microbiology papers I've read. There's no fluff; it tells you how to reproduce and where to buy the materials, and it seems to balance terms in the jargon-heavy field with short explanations, requiring minimal googling to get an overview if you are topically familiar cell biology and chemistry (not to mention VDJ recombination, a fascinating bio-algorithm which should inspire any computer scientist [0]). Compare this to a typical paper where there is an off-putting amount of fluff and then straight into dense unreadable jargon for the rest of the paper.<p>The key takeaway seems to be that not all antibodies are equal, and there are probably on the order of 10^X antibodies that might work well enough to be cured for a specific coronavirus, but these antibody molecules can interact strongly or weakly with other systems in the body. You want one that is a very strong antagonist of the target site on the virus while being as unreactive as possible with everything else. Getting the very best protein on the first try (either via infection or vaccine production) is never guaranteed, but the hope is that it would be good enough and not cause other problems. Also note that you can produce problematic antibodies and T/B cell surface receptors in response to either a vaccine or a virus (see long covid).<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V(D)J_recombination" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V(D)J_recombination</a>
I didn't read the article, but my very basic understanding of mRNA vaccines is that they cause your own cells to produce the spike protein so that your immune system can learn to attack it without actually having the virus present. Does this finding imply that the vaccine would also inhibit DNA damage repair? Or is it more like, in combination with the virus, the spike protein inhibits DNA repair?
Methinks we won't really know about the consequences of mRNA (or COVID itself for that matter) until many years later. And currently we're flying blind, and a lot of people are driven by heavily politicized, semi-religious fervor, to the point of giving this stuff to healthy 5 year olds who are not in danger of severe disease at all.