Covid-19 Variant Vaccines in Works at Johnson & Johnson

“We have to be prepared,” Gorsky said on Thursday. “We should prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

J & J’s original Covid-19 vaccine was licensed by US regulators in late February. In a late-stage study, 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 study, where it spread a variant that demonstrated resistance to vaccines that were 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 vaccine or as part of a ‘multivalent’ vaccine targeting other strains.

Laboratory tests and clinical trials have generally shown that genuine Covid-19 vaccines retain much of their protection against a highly transmissible variant first identified in the UK.

Their potency appears to be low compared to the strain first identified in South Africa, although the J&J vaccine was solidly effective in a clinical trial to prevent severe and critical cases of Covid-19 there.

Some virus variants “are more worrying because they result in fundamental mechanistic changes that can have an impact, for example, on the rate of transmission or even on morbidity or mortality,” Mr Gorsky said during an online discussion hosted by the Economic Club. from New York.

He said the need for booster vaccines or modified vaccines will depend on the evolution of variants in the coming months, but the company is preparing now. “We are working on the next few generations of vaccines,” he said.

J&J-based New Brunswick, New Jersey is also conducting a study on whether two doses of vaccine are more effective than the currently authorized single-dose regimen. The results are expected by the end of this year.

J&J executives have previously said they are working on a potential vaccine to target the first identified variant in South Africa, but that it was not yet clear which variants to focus on in further development.

A J&J vaccine targeting a variant could be particularly useful in countries that rely on easier storage and handling requirements for J&J vaccine technology. The image can be kept stable in the refrigerator for a longer period than the messenger RNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer Inc.,

which could be useful in lower-income countries with more limited cold chain distribution infrastructure.

Write to Peter Loftus at [email protected]