A doctor has a bottle of Biontech and Pfizer Crown vaccine between his fingers in the pharmacy of Tübingen University Hospital (UKT).
Sebastian Gollnow | alliance image | Getty Images
According to a laboratory study by the US drug manufacturer, the Povizer Covf-19 vaccine and BioNTech appeared to work against a key mutation in the new highly transmissible variants of coronavirus discovered in the UK and South Africa.
The as-yet-unpaired peer-reviewed study by Pfizer and scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch indicated that the vaccine was effective in neutralizing the virus with the so-called N501Y mutation in the ear protein.
The mutation could be responsible for increased transmissibility and had been worried it could also cause the virus to escape antibody-induced neutralization by the vaccine, said Phil Dormitzer, one of Pfizer’s leading viral vaccine scientists.
The study was done with blood drawn from people who had been given the vaccine. Its findings are limited, as it does not analyze the full set of mutations found in any of the new variants of the rapidly spreading virus.
Dormitzer said it was encouraging that the vaccine appears effective against the mutation, as well as 15 other mutations that the company has previously tested.
“So now we’ve tested 16 different mutations, and none of them have really had any significant impact. That’s the good news,” he said. “That doesn’t mean the 17th doesn’t.”
Dormitzer noted that another mutation found in the South African variant, called the E484K mutation, is also of concern.
Researchers plan to do similar tests to see if the vaccine is effective against other mutations found in UK and South Africa variants and hope to have more data in a few weeks.
Scientists have expressed concern that the vaccines that are being rolled out cannot be protected from new variants, particularly the one that emerged in South Africa.
Simon Clarke, an associate professor of cell microbiology at the University of Reading, said this week that while both variants had some common features, the one found in South Africa “has a number of additional mutations” that included more extensive alterations of the protein ear.
The Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which use synthetic messenger RNA technology, can be rapidly modified to address new mutations in a virus and horse. Scientists have suggested that the changes could be made in as little as six weeks.