Vaccine Genome Researchers Report 99.7% Colinear Identity Between a U.S. Civil War Era Smallpox Vaccine and Horsepox Virus - Seite 2

“This recent discovery is another step in establishing that what is called ’horsepox‘ today was used to vaccinate against smallpox in the 19^th century,” said Seth Lederman, M.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Tonix Pharmaceuticals. “Dr. Edward Jenner invented vaccination in 1798 and the procedure was called vaccination because the inoculum material was initially obtained from lesions on the udders of cows affected by a mild disease known as cowpox. ‘Cow’ is ‘vacca’ in Latin. However, Dr. Jenner suspected that cowpox originated from horsepox.⁵ Subsequently, Dr. Jenner and others immunized against smallpox using material directly obtained from horses. The use of vaccines from horses was sometimes called ‘equination’ from the Latin ‘equus’ which means ‘horse’. Equination and vaccination were practiced side-by-side in Europe⁶. Several years ago, we recognized that the 2006 genome sequence of the 1976 Mongolian horsepox⁴ may be more like the vaccines that Jenner used than modern vaccinia vaccines, because the modern vaccinia vaccines appear to have undergone both divergent and convergent evolution since Jenner’s time. To recreate a vaccine similar to Jenner’s, together with scientists at the University of Alberta, Canada, we synthesized³ a live horsepox virus based on the 1976 Mongolian horsepox virus sequence and we are developing it as a potential vaccine for smallpox and monkeypox, called TNX-801. Horsepox is also the vector for our COVID-19 vaccine, TNX-1800, which has been modified to direct the expression of CoV-2 spike protein.”

“The new findings are particularly significant, because they confirm that horsepox has been used as a safe and effective smallpox vaccine since at least 1860, and probably since Edward Jenner’s time in 1798,” continued Dr. Lederman. “The new report confirms that modern ’vaccinia’-based smallpox vaccines from around the world have lost, apparently convergently, two genomic segments in evolution: an 11 Kilobase (kB) segment on the left side and a 6 kB Segment on the right side relative to the progenitor horsepox-like vaccines. The presence of these genetic elements in horsepox may contribute to the decreased virulence of horsepox relative to vaccinia in mice and the smaller plaque size in tissue culture. Later, after approximately 1875, when vaccinia propagation was moved from ‘arm to arm’ to growth on cows in ‘vaccine farms’⁸, the core viral sequences of modern vaccinia vaccines appear to have diverged away from the horsepox core viral sequences. A standard for modern vaccine development and manufacturing is to make a ‘master virus bank’ and tie vaccine production to the exact properties of the original master virus bank. Edward Jenner did not keep a master virus bank, because his work pre-dated understanding of viruses by more than 100 years. However, the recent work on sequencing and analyzing archaic smallpox vaccines gives us a clearer understanding of the structure and features of Jenner’s vaccines. The more we learn, the more we are led to believe that Jenner’s vaccinia was either horsepox or more like horsepox than modern vaccinia vaccines.”