Idea for immunology: molecular mannequins

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The immune system is designed to produce antibodies at random, near, to be able to latch onto shaped objects, such as viruses and other pathogens. Whichever antibodies are used up the most, more of them are produced. So here is my thought, that for diseases that people would rather have an immunity to prior to receiving them "molecular mannequins" of the disease could be injected. These "molecular mannequins" would be in the same form as the pathogen, so as to allow the antibodies to latch onto them, but they would have no functional components inside so as to be harmless to the patient. The antibodies would be produced to counter the "molecular mannequins" allowing for the prevention of allowing the pathogens of which these "molecular mannequins" are in the form of to even have a chance.

vaccine?

unfortunately we are pretty much very limited in production of highly sophisticated things that would enable precise position of particular molecular goups within sub nanometer resolution. all sophisticated molecular machines are still taken from the nature i.e. we need animals or other living things to produce them.
then we purify and even that is difficult.
i am obsessing over that idea for a while, how to get more control.

as far as i know they use dead viruses, no? and that is pretty much the best idea because it will have the perfect recognition.

Having taken immunology (though its not my major) it's not quite that simple . . . its best described as a cascade:

1) Produce random ABs (which is why allergies develop)
2) Send out ABs
3) If Abs attach to something, send WBs to destroy
4) Collect WBs and sift through for the foreign DNA/RNA sequence in the liver
5) Replicate "immunity pattern" from WB and begin invasion
6) Commit immunity to immunological memory
7) Repeat

However, and whether this interests you or not, this is only one of 3 immune systems we have: Surface (body salts, sweat, etc), Innate (immediate protection, but no long term immunity), Adaptive (most commonly referred, long term protection). This is protection in the order by which foreign microbes must first pass.

The idea is interesting, but would be problematic since your body would recognize the (for example) false H1N1, but you would still likely be susceptible to the real one. In a way, you could already call a vaccination a molecular mannequin. I wish i could recommend a book on the matter, but again, I've only had one class and cant really remember all of the nuances that were discussed. Bear in mind that even a dead microbe can be used as a vaccination (or for the process of making one).

There are several types of vaccines.

1. killed: contains lots of dead microbe. The advantages are that killed vaccines aren't as finicky about storage temperatures and there's no way for it to cause an infection. The downside is that you have to inject whopping amounts of antigen to stimulate a reaction from the immune system, and even then it still isn't always enough. That's why they often add extra stuff called adjuvants to killed vaccines. Subunit vaccines work about the same way.

2. live attenuated: the virus is alive but weakened somehow (like serial passage through another species or chemical attenuation) so it will still replicate naturally in the body (which means you don't have to inject as much of it) but be less likely to cause clinical disease. The vaccines generally generate a more robust response from the immune system than the killed vaccines and so they are more effective and protection lasts longer. The downside: they are very easily inactivated if they aren't stored properly and they can still cause clinical disease in those with a weakened immune system or the occasional unlucky but normal person. Also, if quality control isn't extremely strict, you can run into some scary problems.

3. vectored aka recombinant: this is the cool new kind of vaccine. Basically, they stick a piece of the virus they want to protect against onto another virus that will replicate normally in the body but is unable to cause disease. It has the advantages of the live attenuated vaccine but without the risk of causing infection.

There are probably some other new kinds in the works, but these are the biggies in production now, I believe.