Johnson & Johnson JNJ -0.19%
is working on several versions of the new generation Covid-19 vaccine that may be needed to bolster protection against some of the coronavirus variants that have emerged.
J&J CEO Alex Gorsky said Thursday that he hoped J & J’s newly licensed vaccine and other current features of Covid-19 would provide some protection against new variants, but reinforcement features or modified versions of the Covid-19 may be needed. original vaccines.
“We have to be prepared,” Gorsky said Thursday. “We should prepare for the worst and expect the best.”
The original J&J Covid-19 vaccine was authorized by U.S. regulators in late February. In a final-phase trial, the shot was 66% effective in protecting people in a large international study of moderate to severe Covid-19 disease.
But its effectiveness was lower in the South African part of the trial, where a variant has been shown that has shown resistance to vaccines designed to work primarily against an earlier version of the virus that circulated widely last year. .
Other companies including Modern Inc.
they are also taking steps to develop and test modified vaccines that can better target variants.
Researchers are exploring whether some variant-targeted vaccines should be given as a booster or as part of a “multivalent” vaccine that is also targeted at other strains.
Laboratory tests and clinical trials have shown that original Covid-19 vaccines retain much of their protection against a highly transmissible variant first identified in the UK.
Its potency appears to be reduced against the strain first identified in South Africa, although the J&J vaccine was solidly effective in a clinical trial to prevent serious and critical cases of Covid-19 there.
Some virus variants “are more worrying because they lead to fundamental mechanistic changes that can have an impact, for example, on the rate of transmission or even on morbidity or mortality,” Gorsky said during an online discussion organized by the New York Economic Club.
He said the need to make booster vaccines or modified vaccines will depend on the evolution of the variants in the coming months, but the company is preparing now. “We are working on several next generations of vaccines,” he said.
J&J, based in New Brunswick, New York, is also conducting a study on whether two doses of its vaccine are more effective than the currently authorized single-dose regimen. The results are expected later this year.
J&J executives have already said they are working on a potential vaccine to target the variant first identified in South Africa, but that it was not yet clear which variants would focus on further development.
A variant-targeted J&J vaccine may be particularly useful in countries with the easiest storage and handling requirements for J&J vaccine technology. The shot may remain stable in the refrigerator for a longer period than Moderna and Pfizer messenger RNA vaccines Inc.,
which could be useful in lower-income countries with a more limited cold chain distribution infrastructure.
As highly transmissible coronavirus variants spread around the world, scientists are rushing to understand why these new versions of the virus are spreading faster and what it can mean for vaccination efforts. New research says the key may be the ear protein, which gives the coronavirus its unmistakable shape. Illustration: Nick Collingwood / WSJ
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It appeared in the March 19, 2021 print edition as “J&J intends to modify doses for variants.”