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Drug makers, including BioNTech and Moderna, are scrambling to test their COVID-19 vaccines against the new, fast-spreading variant of the virus that is sweeping Britain, the latest challenge in the fast-paced race to curb the pandemic.
Ugur Sahin, chief executive of Germany’s BioNTech, which with its partner Pfizer took less than a year to get a vaccine approved, said Tuesday that he needs another two weeks to find out if his injection can stop the mutant variant of the virus.
Moderna hopes the immunity in its vaccine will protect against the variant and is conducting further tests in the coming weeks to confirm this, the company said in a statement to CNN. Moderna did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
The mutation known as the B.1.1.7 lineage can be up to 70% more infectious and more of a concern to children. It has wreaked havoc in Britain, sparking a wave of travel bans that are disrupting trade with Europe and threatening to further isolate the island country.
Sahin said there are nine mutations in the virus.
While he doesn’t think any are significant enough to circumvent the protection provided by BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine, which was approved by the European Union on Monday, he said another 14 days or so of study and data collection are needed. before offering a definitive answer.
“Scientifically, it is very likely that the immune response of this vaccine can also deal with this variant of the virus,” he said in a call with reporters.
“The vaccine contains more than 1,270 amino acids, and only 9 of them have changed (in the mutant virus). That means that 99% of the protein remains the same.”
Germany’s CureVac said it does not expect the variant to affect the efficacy of its experimental injection, which is based on the same messenger RNA (mRNA) technology used by Pfizer-BioNTech.
Last week, it began late-stage clinical trials on its candidate vaccine and is constantly reviewing variants, which the company says are common as viruses spread.
Although there are multiple mutations, said BioNTech’s Sahin, most of the virus sites that are recognized by the body’s T-cell response are unchanged and multiple antibody binding sites are also preserved.
MRNA ADVANTAGE
In the event that the variant presents vaccine developers with an unexpected challenge, an advantage of mRNA is that scientists can quickly redesign the genetic material in the injection to match that of the mutated protein, while modifying traditional vaccines. would require additional steps.
“In principle, the beauty of mRNA technology is that we can directly start designing a vaccine that completely mimics this new mutation,” Sahin said.
“We might be able to technically provide a new vaccine in six weeks. Of course, this is not just a technical question. We have to deal with how regulators … would view that.”
Britain’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, said on Saturday that the vaccines appeared to be suitable for eliciting an immune response to the variant of the coronavirus.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday it will convene a meeting of members to discuss strategies to counter the mutation.
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