A COVID Vaccine you can drink?

Yes, one is in the works, that is a vaccine you can drink rather than getting a shot in the arm. Folks who choose to get vaccinated but don’t like needles, will appreciate this episode.

In a recent episode of Causes or Cures, I have a conversation with Dr. Kyle Flanigan, CEO and co-founder of US Specialty Formulations about his company’s work on creating a COVID-19 vaccine you can drink. He will discuss his company’s vaccine platform, called QYNDR, and how it produces oral vaccines. He’ll tell us what an oral vaccine is and how it differs from the traditional vaccines we are used to, including differences in immune response, storage, accessibility and scalability. Dr. Flanigan will also walk us through how they are testing the vaccine, the funding requirements involved, early results from an early-stage trial in New Zealand, safety concerns, and what’s in store for the future.

If you are interested in vaccine development, you’ll appreciate this podcast.  Dr. Flanigan discusses how much (resources and funding) go into testing a new vaccine, which will help you understand why it’s mostly large and very wealthy drug companies in the vaccine development game. That’s unfortunate, because it’s harder to create healthy competition and gives these larger companies a lot of control over the market.

The podcast will also interest you if you are specifically concerned about COVID-19 and the types of prevention measures folks are developing and testing. Dr. Flanigan does a nice job in the interview of explaining the shortcomings of the current COVID vaccines and how oral vaccines might overcome some of those shortcomings.

You can listen to the podcast here. 

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast or check out some of the other episodes. I included links to the more recent ones below:

Vaccine Nation: America’s changing relationship with immunization, with medical historian, Dr. Conis. Learn more here.

The Army’s new holistic health and fitness system to make healthier and “more lethal” warriers. Learn more here. 

Thanks to everyone who tunes in to the podcast and/or who reads the blog. Remember, all the blogs I write are clearly marked. There are advertisement blogs scattered about, and they all come with a disclaimer that I do not scientifically review them. Funds from those blogs help support the podcast and let me keep the podcast ad free. (So far, at least!)

Chat soon,

Eeks