Drug makers expect tests to confirm effectiveness of vaccines against new variant of coronavirus

ZURICH v FRANKFURT (Reuters) – At least four drug manufacturers expect COVID-19 vaccines to be effective against the new variant of the rapidly spreading virus that is unleashing in the UK and are conducting tests that should be confirmed in a few weeks.

Ugur Sahin, executive director of BioNTech in Germany, which together with partner Pfizer Inc, took less than a year to get approval for a vaccine, said on Tuesday that it expects its messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine to continue to function well .

Moderna Inc., German CureVac and UK drug maker AstraZeneca Plc also believe their shootings will work against the new threat that has sown chaos in Britain, causing a wave of travel bans that disrupt trade with Europe and threaten to isolate and more the country of the island.

“From a scientific point of view, it is very likely that the immune response of this vaccine can also cope with this variant of the virus,” he said in a call with reporters.

Sahin said it would take another two weeks of study and data collection to get a definitive answer.

“The vaccine contains more than 1,270 amino acids and only nine of them are modified (in the mutant virus). This means that 99% of the proteins are still the same. “

The mutation known as line B.1.1.7 can be up to 70% more infectious and can be more worrying for children.

If the variant presents an unexpected challenge to vaccine developers, an advantage of mRNA is that scientists can quickly reconstruct the genetic material in the picture to match that of the mutant protein, while modifying traditional vaccines would require additional steps.

“Basically, the beauty of mRNA technology is that we can directly start designing a vaccine that completely mimics this new mutation,” Sahin said.

“We may be able to offer a new technical vaccine in six weeks. Of course, this is not just a technical question. We need to deal with how regulators … would see this. “

Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and CureVac have all developed mRNA vaccines, while AstraZeneca has a more traditional vaccine that uses an adenovirus found in chimpanzees to deliver genetic material from the coronavirus to stimulate an immune response.

CureVac in Germany last week began late-stage clinical trials on its vaccine candidate and is constantly reviewing variants, which the company said are common as viruses spread.

Britain’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, said on Saturday that vaccines appear to be adequate in generating an immune response to the coronavirus variant.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday it would convene a meeting of members to discuss strategies to combat mutation.