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BERLIN: German company BioNTech said on Friday (January 8) that a preliminary study shows that its vaccine works against a key mutation in the coronavirus variants discovered in Britain and South Africa, which experts say is more contagious than normal strains. of coronavirus.
Tests have shown that “antibodies from people who have received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine effectively neutralize SARS-CoV-2 with a key mutation that is also found in two highly transmissible strains,” said the German company of the vaccine you developed. with the US group Pfizer.
The B117 coronavirus, which emerged in south-east Britain late last year, has been shown to be significantly more contagious (40-70%) than normal variants of the virus.
Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine, which is being rolled out around the world, relies on the body’s production of a particular part of the virus, the spike protein, which the immune system then learns to kill.
READ: WHO recommends 2 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine within 21 to 28 days.
Because the mutation in the British variant and another South African variant directly affects the spike protein of the virus, it was feared that it would render the vaccine ineffective against the mutant versions.
But BioNTech said research by Pfizer and the University of Texas Medical Branch “indicates that the key mutation N501Y, found in emerging variants from the UK and South Africa, does not create resistance to immune responses induced by the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. ” .
The study authors themselves said that the findings were limited, however, as the mutated variant tested “does not include the full set of peak mutations found in fast-spreading strains in the UK or South Africa.”
READ: What we know about the new strain of coronavirus found in Britain
“GOOD NEWS”
The research has yet to be peer-reviewed, but experts expressed cautious optimism about the findings.
“This is good news, mainly because it is not bad news,” said Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“If the opposite result had been found, that the vaccine did not appear to be effective against the variation of the virus studied, that would have been bad and very worrying.”
Last month, German developer BioNTech said it had the technology to produce a new vaccine against new mutated strains of Sars-CoV-2 in just six weeks.
Eleanor Riley, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Edinburgh, said there was reason for optimism that mRNA vaccines could be effective against numerous mutated variants.
“There will be other new mutants and we will need to monitor the situation carefully by repeating this type of study on the new variants as they appear,” he said.
“There is a limit to the number of mutations that the virus can accumulate and still be able to bind to the receptor (of the human cell).”
The EU said on Friday it had reached an agreement to double its supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to a total of 600 million doses.
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