Sir John Bell, a professor at Oxford University in the UK, told CNBC on Wednesday that he was confident that Covid-19 vaccines could be re-equipped to provide effective protection against future coronavirus mutations.
Bell’s comments on “Closing Bell” come as global attention is focused on a strain of the virus that is widely circulating in the UK and can spread more easily than previous variants. It has since been detected in Colorado and California.
“It will now be a cat and mouse game,” said Bell, who helped oversee the development of the Oxford vaccine in collaboration with AstraZeneca. The UK government granted the emergency use permit for the vaccine on Wednesday, after issuing a limited permit to the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine earlier this month.
Studies are being conducted 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 safe.”
“Given the level of disease in the UK with the new variant … we will have many examples of people who have had the vaccine who are exposed to the virus, and we will be able to explain this fairly quickly if the vaccine is effectively protective against it. strain, “Bell added.
In addition to the coronavirus variant found in Britain, a separate variety has been focused that is found for the first time in South Africa. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said Wednesday it could also circulate in the United States.
Bell told CNBC that he believes the variant discovered in South Africa has mutations that make it “a little more troubling” than the strain prevalent in the UK. However, Bell expressed confidence in how scientists will handle any mutation in the virus that evades the protection provided by existing vaccines.
“If we have to make new vaccines, we can make them 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. The Oxford-AstraZeneca viral vector vaccine uses a weakened version of a common cold virus that causes infections in chimpanzees.
“We’re ready if we need to make another vaccine to tackle it,” Bell added. He also noted that the development process to upgrade vaccines is unlikely to require the same large-scale clinical trials conducted this year, only 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 serves on Pfizer’s board of directors. “Some viruses like the flu cause surface proteins to evolve very quickly and that’s why we need a different flu vaccine every season,” he told CNBC earlier this month.
Gottlieb said then that he also believes existing vaccines will protect against the strain of the virus being transmitted in the UK because of the way vaccines target the entire tip protein of the coronavirus.
“We are developing antibodies against many different regions of this protein, so even if a part of this protein were mutated and some antibodies no longer recognized it, there would be antibodies against other parts of this protein,” he said. . “So this probably won’t happen easily from our vaccines, but we’ll eventually have to upgrade the vaccines.”
Outreach: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and board member of Pfizer, the start of Tempus genetic testing, and biotech company Illumina. Gottlieb is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and the Royal Caribbean Healthy Sail Panel.