Gritstone bio, Inc. (GRTS)

Have you ever seen a vaccine company that has $200 million valued at less than $400million? It has great clinical data, robust pipeline. All it needs to do now is finish up P2/3, start partnering up with manufacturing. On top, more funding could start coming in with backing from NIH, CEPI Gates Foundation The $200 million in cash GRTS has in it's bank will serve as a big cushion and comfortable runway for a long time. The market drawback actually gave a lot of investors chance to load up on GRTS shares. CANT WAIT TO HEAR POSITIVE UPDATES AND PLANNING TO TAKE THIS TO MARKET. GLTA!!

Josh Fischman: Hi, and welcome to COVID, Quickly, a Scientific American podcast series.
This is your fast-track update on the COVID pandemic. We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research, and help you understand what it really means.
I’m Josh Fischman, Scientific American’s senior health editor. Tanya Lewis, usually here with me, has the day off.
Today, new research shows how old cold viruses may help protect you against the coronavirus causing the pandemic, and vaccine makers are not rushing out shots against the Omicron variant, even though the original shots have lost some effectiveness. What’s the holdup? We’ll explain.

The virus is so wildly infectious, though, that the 20 percent of serious cases have been a global catastrophe. Five and a half million people dead, 850,000 of them in the U.S.
But in people who don’t get very ill—what’s protecting them? We hear a lot about neutralizing antibodies, but this is a new virus to us. You don’t get antibodies until after you’ve been exposed or vaccinated.
It turns out some people might be getting help from another part of the immune system—T-cells, which were triggered years ago by exposure to different but related coronaviruses. These microbes have been with us forever, and they cause sneezing and runny noses: the common cold.
The cold coronavirus and the pandemic coronavirus are distantly related. But they do share similar proteins. Early in the pandemic, scientists noticed that T-cells that reacted to the cold virus also reacted to the pandemic virus. These are called cross-reactive T-cells. But since researchers saw this in test tubes, they had no idea what this meant for immunity in real life.
Ajit Lalvani, an infectious disease physician at Imperial College London, decided to find out. England has a really good contact tracing system. It allowed Lalvani and his colleagues to find 52 people who lived with individuals who tested positive for COVID. These 52 started out negative themselves. Within about 3 days, half of that group, or 26, turned positive. The other 26 stayed negative.
Taking a closer look at the negative people, who didn’t get COVID, Lalvani’s team found that 7 of them had a lot of these cross-reactive T-cells. None of the people who got COVID had such cells. Zero. Lalvani told me this is a very substantial protective effect, and his team just published the results in the journal Nature Communications. The T cells, primed by the older cold virus, recognize the new pandemic virus because it has those similar proteins, and they work to fight it off.
Immunologist Alex Sette, from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, told me he thinks this research is on the right track. Other studies have linked recent exposure to these cold viruses with less severe COVID, says Sette, who was not involved in Lalvani’s work. Research has also tied pre-existing T-cells to a stronger immune response to a COVID vaccine.
The important thing about the T-cells is they point to new targets to add to second-generation vaccines. The proteins these T-cells reacted to went beyond the well-known spike protein at the heart of the first-gen shots. The cells respond to other proteins called N and O-R-F, for instance.
Adding those to a new vaccine formula, both Lalvani and Sette suggest, could widen the protection of vaccines against variants. The proteins do seem to trigger a broader immune response to different forms of the coronavirus.
A few companies have such “T-cell enhanced” vaccines in the works. Gritstone and ImmunityBio, biotech firms in California, are two that have started clinical trials. Including more of these proteins in a shot could create a vaccine capable of boosting your immunity against whatever variant comes along.
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The variant that has come along right now is, of course, Omicron. And it is Exhibit A for the case that vaccines rolled out a year ago have lost a bit of their edge.
Remember the original vaccine trials showed Pfizer and Moderna shots were 90 to 95 percent effective at stopping infection. Now two shots of the Pfizer vaccine are only 33 percent effective at stopping Omicron infection, scientists looking at cases in South Africa found. A booster shot does increase the amount of Omicron-neutralizing antibodies. And the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, with that booster, are tremendously effective at preventing hospitalization and serious illness.
Still, Omicron’s wild spread has many people asking why we don’t have a specific shot to stop it? MRNA vaccine makers have been saying they could roll out new formulas really

Bought 7k more shares today. Planning for 43k more over next few weeks. Perhaps powers that be will continue to cooperate and pound bio’s lower. Looking likely.

Patience. Eazy Picknz
💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰🤙🤙🤙🤙🤙🤙🤙

What the market and bears doesnt understand, which is very important in the midst of this: As the pipeline of Gritstone grows and progress: COVID, HIV, Cancer. And if price and valuation of company stays as low as it does now, likelyhood of a buyout increases exponentially!

If the company is sucessful in any of the three core fields, any big pharma, will undoubtly want to buy Gritstone up for 5x-20x of current price. And we have already seen Gritstone publishing extremely good data with their COVID trial and with Cancer trials.

Its no coincidence that they hired Clare Fisher, a well known bigshot M&A expert! The company could already be in discussion with the companies they are working with:
AstraZeneca, Roche, Gilead. Which is why they hired Clare. All of these 3 companies have cash and could easily pay $2B + for Gritstone without sweating.

Below is some basic science behind Gritstone Bio vaccine any why Gritstone's broad spectrum immunity involving protection from T Cell vaccine maybe the go-to long term solution for COVID-19.
Omicron and The role of T cells
Jan.10, 2022 by THuzar

The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 has many mutations, which means it can evade the antibody response.

“Although antibodies are effective at neutralizing SARS-CoV-2, mutations within the spike protein in new variants often result in reduced ability of the preexisting antibodies to do so.”

“In vaccinated individuals or those with a prior history of COVID-19, memory T cells will respond quickly if they encounter the same viral peptides bound to the same MHC molecules again.”

“...if the peptides they originally recognized are no longer present in the virus as a consequence of mutations, these memory T cells could have lost their purpose. This depends on whether the mutated peptides can still be recognized by them,” said Prof. Kern.

“Even if Omicron — or some other variant, for that matter — can potentially escape antibodies, a robust T cell response (such as immunity induced by Gritstone vaccine) can still be expected to offer protection and help to prevent significant illness.”

“In order to evade such a broad immune response, the virus would need to make significantly more mutations than what we have seen so far, which might not be viable for the virus,” said Dr. Quadeer.

Gilead Sciences to Acquire Kite Pharma for $11.9 Billion ·(NEOANTIGEN)
Pfizer Bets Big On mRNA: New Deals Include $1.3 Billion Collaboration With Beam (mRNA)

Gritstone offers both= $11.9 + $1.3 = Billions???