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The EU Vaccine Rollout. The EU Commission, responsible for vaccine procurement, has come under fire particularly from Germany. Despite purchasing seven different vaccines, only two have been approved (BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna) by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Unfortunately, these two first wave vaccines only represent 33.3% of their total order.

There have been positive scientific breakthroughs that provide new hope for millions of people living with multiple sclerosis. MS is a chronic condition that affects an estimated 2.5 million people worldwide.

B.1.1.7 According to the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) the new variant, which has two names, B.1.1.7 or VUI 202012/01, is 71% more transmissible than any other variant. In the meantime, Public Health England (PHE) has made life a little easier for us and simply called the variant VOC (Variant of Concern).

Chemotherapy. Plant metabolites have a huge range of biological functions and more than 60% of drugs with anti-cancer activity are derived from plants. More recently the brassica family has been an area of strong scientific enquiry.

This week in the UK there was a landmark legal case that identified air pollution as a cause of death. On a global basis in the capital city of Mongolia, Ulan Bator, in 2018, a government-installed sensor reported a PM2.5 per cubic meter rate of 3,320 μg/m3 in Ulan Bator. The World Health Organization (WHO) level is 10 μg/m3.

mRNA vaccine production is simple and laboratory based, can be easily adapted and is more cost effective, which are important considerations for a global pandemic. mRNA vaccines contain the instructions for making the viral protein instead of the protein itself. Critically, as time is of the essence, mRNA vaccines can be developed and manufactured quickly once the genome of a virus has been sequenced.

Most vaccines are refrigerated at around 2-8°C but Pfizer’s vaccine, which uses messenger RNA, has vastly different requirements. Messenger RNA (or mRNA) vaccines have never been used before but unfortunately they are not thermostable.

It has recently been discovered that gene editing can transform the fat that we store in our bodies from white fat to brown or beige fat. Most of the fat we store is white fat and its function is simply to store energy whereas brown/beige burns energy.