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Drug makers that designed the first Covid-19 vaccine to gain clearance from Western regulators say they could reinstate the injection to counter a new strain in just six weeks, if needed.
BioNTech SE CEO Ugur Sahin said he is confident that the vaccine his company developed with Pfizer Inc. will work well against the fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus that is raising alarms in the UK and beyond.
However, if the current vaccine does not offer adequate protection, the company could modify it by updating small pieces of genetic information called messenger RNA that its vaccine uses.
“The beauty of messenger RNA technology is that we can start directly to design a vaccine, which completely mimics this new mutation,” Sahin said at a news conference Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, Moderna Inc indicated that it thought its vaccine would still protect people from the virus and was running tests to confirm it.
Authorities ranging from the European Medicines Agency to the UK government have said there is no evidence to suggest that the strain, called B.1.1.7, could evade coronavirus vaccines.
Most Covid injections target the spike protein the virus uses to enter cells, and only small changes have been detected in new versions, according to Morgan Stanley analyst David Risinger.
Total immunogenicity
“All currently identified strains, including B.1.1.7, only carry sporadic point mutations in the spike protein that are believed to be unlikely to alter the full spectrum of their immunogenicity,” Risinger said in a note.
Moderna sank 9% in New York, Pfizer fell 1.7% and BioNTech’s US deposit receipts fell 5.5%. Moderna has increased more than six times since the beginning of the year, while BioNTech’s ADRs have almost tripled.
Countries around the world are restricting travel to and from the UK due to concerns about the variant, which officials say may be up to 70% more transmittable than others.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has shut down London, citing the threat of tension.
UK authorities have said that while the variant is widespread in London and the south-east of England, there is no reason to believe it causes more serious illness than previous versions.
Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific advisor to Operation Warp Speed, the US Covid drug and vaccine acceleration program, said there is no strong evidence that it is more transmissible.
Still, drug makers are running tests to determine how well their vaccines will defend against new strains. AstraZeneca Plc, a partner at the University of Oxford, said in a statement that it is investigating the impact of the mutation and that the company does not believe it will affect the effectiveness of its injection.
BioNTech said their tests will take about two weeks. Paris-based Sanofi said it will test the efficacy of its experimental vaccine against any new variants that emerge.
Constant test
Moderna has tested its vaccine against older strains and expects it to “protect against the recently described variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the UK,” according to an emailed statement. “We will conduct additional testing of the vaccine in the coming weeks to confirm this expectation.”
German biotech CureVac NV said it is constantly testing its Covid-19 experimental shot against different mutations. While it does not believe its product is less effective against the UK variant, it could also introduce a new version within six weeks, the company said in an emailed statement.
If companies like BioNTech need to update their vaccines, the most likely scenario is that regulators will approve newer versions fairly quickly, without another round of large-scale clinical trials, according to Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Medicine. Tropical.
BioNTech’s messenger RNA platform, along with one from Moderna, has already been shown to be largely safe, and the review would be analogous to annual flu vaccines, he said.
Covid injections are likely to be redesigned in the future to keep them highly effective against new viral strains, Evans said.
Stay in tune
“It’s like a car to me: I tune the engine for better performance, but in terms of overall safety, that makes very little difference,” Evans said. “We know that these mRNA vaccines are quite safe.”
To get updates, the developers would likely only need to show that their products are generating a comparable immune response, something that could likely be done with fewer than 100 human volunteers, said Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London.
“That alone would be enough to allow the new vaccine evolution to be licensed,” Openshaw said. “I see absolutely no reason why a regulator would insist that they would have to go back to square one.”
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