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Sir John Bell, a professor at the University of Oxford in the UK, told CNBC on Wednesday that he was confident that Covid-19 vaccines could be modified to provide effective protection against future mutations of the coronavirus.
Bell’s comments on “Closing Bell” come when world attention is focused on a strain of the virus that is widely circulated in the UK and can spread more easily than previous variants. Since then it has been detected in Colorado and California.
“Now it’s going to be a game of cat and mouse,” said Bell, who helped oversee the development of the Oxford vaccine in association with AstraZeneca. The UK government granted emergency use authorization for the vaccine on Wednesday, after having issued a limited authorization for the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech earlier this month.
Studies are underway to officially determine whether the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine protects against the new strain of the virus, Bell said. “We think they probably can, but we just want to be absolutely sure.”
“Given the level of disease in the UK with the new variant … we are going to have many examples of people who have received the vaccine and who have been exposed to the virus, and we will be able to say quite quickly whether the vaccine is really protective. against that strain, “Bell added.
In addition to the variant of the coronavirus found in Britain, a separate strain that was first found in South Africa has been targeted. Officials with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that it could also be circulating in the United States.
Bell told CNBC that he believes the variant discovered in South Africa has mutations that make it “a little more concerning” than the prevalent strain in the UK. However, Bell expressed confidence in how scientists will handle any virus mutation that it evades the protection provided by existing vaccines.
“If we have to make new vaccines, we can do it now that we’ve done the initial work. I’m sure our friends with RNA vaccines can do the same,” Bell said. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were developed using messenger RNA technology, a new approach that uses genetic material to elicit an immune response. Oxford-AstraZeneca’s viral vector vaccine uses a weakened version of a common cold virus that causes infections in chimpanzees.
“We are ready if we need to do another vaccine to address it,” Bell added. He also noted that the development process to update vaccines will likely not require the same large-scale clinical trials conducted this year, just immunogenicity studies to make sure it elicits an immune response.
It’s not uncommon for viruses to mutate, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner who sits on Pfizer’s board of directors. “Some viruses, like the flu, develop their surface proteins very quickly, and that is why we need a different flu vaccine each season,” he told CNBC earlier this month.
Gottlieb said then that he also believes that existing vaccines will protect against the UK-borne strain of the virus because of the way vaccines target the entire coronavirus spike protein.
“We are developing antibodies to many different regions of that protein, so even if one part of that protein was mutated and some antibodies no longer recognize it, there would be antibodies to other parts of that protein,” he said. “So this probably won’t bypass our vaccines very easily, but eventually we will have to update vaccines.”
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing startup Tempus, and biotech company Illumina. Gottlieb also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Navigation Panel.
