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Monday, February 17, 2025

Vaccine makers racing to update COVID shots, just in case

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1166 days ago
20211209
FILE – This 2020 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows SARS-CoV-2 virus particles which cause COVID-19. The World Health Organization has appointed an independent scientific panel to advise on whether vaccine shots need reformulating because of omicron or any other mutant. (Hannah A. Bullock, Azaibi Tamin/CDC via AP, File)

FILE – This 2020 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows SARS-CoV-2 virus particles which cause COVID-19. The World Health Organization has appointed an independent scientific panel to advise on whether vaccine shots need reformulating because of omicron or any other mutant. (Hannah A. Bullock, Azaibi Tamin/CDC via AP, File)

By LAU­RAN NEER­GAARD, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

 

(AP) — Vac­cine mak­ers are rac­ing to up­date their COVID-19 shots against the newest coro­n­avirus threat even be­fore it’s clear a change is need­ed, just in case.

Ex­perts doubt to­day’s shots will be­come use­less but say it’s crit­i­cal to see how fast com­pa­nies could pro­duce a re­for­mu­lat­ed dose and prove it works -- be­cause what­ev­er hap­pens with omi­cron, this newest mu­tant won’t be the last.

Omi­cron “is pulling the fire alarm. Whether it turns out to be a false alarm, it would be re­al­ly good to know if we can ac­tu­al­ly do this -- get a new vac­cine rolled out and be ready,” said im­mu­nol­o­gist E. John Wher­ry of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia.

It’s too soon to know how vac­cines will hold up against omi­cron. The first hints this week were mixed: Pre­lim­i­nary lab tests sug­gest two Pfiz­er dos­es may not pre­vent an omi­cron in­fec­tion but they could pro­tect against se­vere ill­ness. And a boost­er shot may rev up im­mu­ni­ty enough to do both.

FILE - A woman is vaccinated against COVID-19 at the Hillbrow Clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, Monday Dec. 6, 2021. The World Health Organization has appointed an independent scientific panel to advise on whether shots need reformulating because of omicron or any other mutant. (AP Photo/ Shiraaz Mohamed, File)

FILE - A woman is vaccinated against COVID-19 at the Hillbrow Clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, Monday Dec. 6, 2021. The World Health Organization has appointed an independent scientific panel to advise on whether shots need reformulating because of omicron or any other mutant. (AP Photo/ Shiraaz Mohamed, File)

Bet­ter an­swers are ex­pect­ed in the com­ing weeks and reg­u­la­tors in the U.S. and oth­er coun­tries are keep­ing a close watch. The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion has ap­point­ed an in­de­pen­dent sci­en­tif­ic pan­el to ad­vise on whether the shots need re­for­mu­lat­ing be­cause of omi­cron or any oth­er mu­tant.

But au­thor­i­ties haven’t laid out what would trig­ger such a dras­tic step: If vac­cine im­mu­ni­ty against se­ri­ous ill­ness drops, or if a new mu­tant mere­ly spreads faster?

“This is not triv­ial,” BioN­Tech CEO Ugur Sahin, Pfiz­er’s vac­cine part­ner, said short­ly be­fore omi­cron’s dis­cov­ery. A com­pa­ny could ap­ply to mar­ket a new for­mu­la “but what hap­pens if an­oth­er com­pa­ny makes an­oth­er pro­pos­al with an­oth­er vari­ant? We don’t have an agreed strat­e­gy.”

It’s a tough de­ci­sion — and the virus moves faster than sci­ence. Just this fall the U.S. gov­ern­ment’s vac­cine ad­vis­ers won­dered why boost­ers weren’t re­tooled to tar­get the ex­tra-con­ta­gious delta vari­ant — on­ly to have the next scary mu­tant, omi­cron, be nei­ther a delta de­scen­dent nor a very close cousin.

If vac­cines do need tweak­ing, there’s still an­oth­er ques­tion: Should there be a sep­a­rate omi­cron boost­er or a com­bi­na­tion shot? And if it’s a com­bo, should it tar­get the orig­i­nal strain along with omi­cron, or the cur­rent­ly dom­i­nant delta vari­ant plus omi­cron? Here’s what we know.

 

COM­PA­NIES AREN’T START­ING FROM SCRATCH

 

COVID-19 vac­cines work by trig­ger­ing pro­duc­tion of an­ti­bod­ies that rec­og­nize and at­tack the spike pro­tein that coats the coro­n­avirus, and many are made with new tech­nol­o­gy flex­i­ble enough for easy up­dat­ing. The Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na vac­cines are fastest to tweak, made with ge­net­ic in­struc­tions that tell the body to make harm­less copies of the spike pro­tein — and that mes­sen­ger RNA can be swapped to match new mu­ta­tions.

Pfiz­er ex­pects to have an omi­cron-spe­cif­ic can­di­date ready for the Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion to con­sid­er in March, with some ini­tial batch­es ready to ship around the same time, chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer Dr. Mikael Dol­sten told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

Mod­er­na is pre­dict­ing 60 to 90 days to have an omi­cron-spe­cif­ic can­di­date ready for test­ing. Oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers that make COVID-19 vac­cines us­ing dif­fer­ent tech­nol­o­gy, in­clud­ing John­son & John­son, al­so are pur­su­ing pos­si­ble up­dates.

Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na al­ready have suc­cess­ful­ly brewed ex­per­i­men­tal dos­es to match delta and an­oth­er vari­ant named be­ta, shots that haven’t been need­ed but of­fered valu­able prac­tice.

 

NOT CLEAR IF TWEAKS ARE NEED­ED

 

So far, the orig­i­nal vac­cines have of­fered at least some cross-pro­tec­tion against pri­or vari­ants. Even if im­mu­ni­ty against omi­cron isn’t as good, Dr. An­tho­ny Fau­ci, the top U.S. in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­pert, hopes the big an­ti­body jump trig­gered by boost­er dos­es will com­pen­sate.

Pfiz­er’s pre­lim­i­nary lab test­ing, re­leased Wednes­day, hint that might be the case but an­ti­bod­ies aren’t the on­ly lay­er of de­fense. Vac­cines al­so spur T cells that can pre­vent se­ri­ous ill­ness if some­one does get in­fect­ed, and Pfiz­er’s first tests showed, as ex­pect­ed, those don’t seem to be af­fect­ed by omi­cron.

Al­so, mem­o­ry cells that can cre­ate new and some­what dif­fer­ent an­ti­bod­ies form with each dose.

“You’re re­al­ly train­ing your im­mune sys­tem not just to deal bet­ter with ex­ist­ing vari­ants, but it ac­tu­al­ly pre­pares a broad­er reper­toire to deal with new vari­ants,” Dol­sten said.

How ag­gres­sive a mu­tant is al­so plays a role in whether to re­for­mu­late the vac­cine. Omi­cron ap­pears to spread eas­i­ly but ear­ly re­ports from South African sci­en­tists hint that it might cause milder in­fec­tions than pre­vi­ous vari­ants.

 

HOW TO TELL IF UP­DATES WORK

 

The FDA has said com­pa­nies won’t need mas­sive stud­ies of tweaked vac­cines but small ones to mea­sure if peo­ple giv­en the up­dat­ed shot have im­mune re­spons­es com­pa­ra­ble to the orig­i­nal, high­ly ef­fec­tive shots.

Wher­ry doesn’t ex­pect da­ta from vol­un­teers test­ing ex­per­i­men­tal omi­cron-tar­get­ed shots un­til at least Feb­ru­ary.

 

WHAT ABOUT COM­BI­NA­TION SHOTS?

 

Flu vac­cines pro­tect against three or four dif­fer­ent strains of in­fluen­za in one shot. If a vac­cine tweak is need­ed for omi­cron, au­thor­i­ties will have to de­cide to whether to make a sep­a­rate omi­cron boost­er or add it to the orig­i­nal vac­cine -- or maybe even fol­low the flu mod­el and try an­oth­er com­bi­na­tion.

There’s some ev­i­dence that a COVID-19 com­bo shot could work. In a small Mod­er­na study, a so-called bi­va­lent boost­er con­tain­ing the orig­i­nal vac­cine and a be­ta-spe­cif­ic dose caused a big­ger an­ti­body jump than ei­ther an orig­i­nal Mod­er­na boost­er or its ex­per­i­men­tal be­ta-spe­cif­ic shot.

And sci­en­tists al­ready are work­ing on next-gen­er­a­tion vac­cines that tar­get parts of the virus less prone to mu­tate.

Omi­cron brings “an­oth­er im­por­tant wake-up call,” Wher­ry said -- not just to vac­ci­nate the world but cre­ate more ver­sa­tile op­tions to get that job done.

___

AP re­porter Jamey Keat­en con­tributed to this re­port.

COVID-19


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