Vials of the Pfizer BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine at the Miguel Hidalgo Centennial Hospital in Aguascalientes, Mexico, on Thursday, January 14, 2020. The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus outbreak in Mexico is 1.57 million at 7:30 am Mexico City, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg News.
Photographer: Mauricio Palos / Bloomberg
Photographer: Mauricio Palos / Bloomberg
Pfizer Inc. i BioNTech SE built the case that its Covid-19 vaccine will protect against the new variant of coronavirus that emerged in the UK with the results of another laboratory test.
I like Previous work in the medical branch of the University of Texas, the results published Wednesday showed that the antibodies in the blood of vaccinated people were able to neutralize a version of the mutant virus that was created in the laboratory. The study was published on the prepress server BioRxiv before peer review.
Unlike the previous study, which focused on a crucial mutation, the new research tested the 10 mutations located in the virus’s ear protein, which helps it bind to host cells. . It is a promising but inconclusive result, as scientists continue to monitor closely whether virus mutations may make it necessary to adjust vaccines.
The antibodies in the blood of 16 volunteers in a previous German vaccine trial were as effective against the mutant strain created in the laboratory as against the original virus. The result “makes it very unlikely that viruses of the British variant will escape” from vaccine protection, wrote the research team, led by BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin.
The BioNTech team, however, is ready to adapt the vaccine if needed in the future, he said. This could be necessary to protect themselves from other strains, among evidence that another variant that emerged in South Africa may be more difficult to verify.
A separate study on this strain raised concern. The scientists found that half of the blood samples from a handful of patients who already had Covid-19 did not have the antibodies needed to protect themselves from the South African variant, which is spreading around the world.
The findings, from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases of South Africa, suggest that these people may no longer be protected from reinfection. In the other half, antibody levels were reduced and the risk of reinfection could not be determined, according to the institute. The results were not reviewed in pairs and were based on a small sample size.
Separately, a third study by a team at Rockefeller University also stressed the importance of closely monitoring the effectiveness of vaccines against variants. The team tested mutations found in variants first discovered in the UK and South Africa, as well as a third in Brazil, in blood samples from 20 volunteers who had obtained the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or a similar trait. Moderna Inc. In their test, donor blood samples were not as effective in neutralizing the variants.
“Vaccines may need to be updated periodically to avoid possible loss of clinical efficacy,” the Rockefeller team wrote. Like the other studies, his work was presented in prepress, before peer review.
(Updates with Rockefeller’s study in the last two paragraphs)