A new vaccine against COVID-19 could soon be available to Americans this summer, and the well-known protein technology used to make it can make the vaccine more enjoyable for those who are wary of vaccines. of mRNA, experts believe.
On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee will meet to review the presentation of Novavax for its vaccine, called NVX-CoV2373. If approved by the committee, the FDA will likely authorize vaccination for adults 18 years of age or older. The move would mark the fourth vaccine approved for emergency use in the United States.
In particular, the planned approval would make it the first new vaccine approved in more than a year in the U.S., and at a time when the most transmissible variants of SARS-CoV-2 have become the dominant strains in the United States. United, than the original. the vaccines were not designed to be targeted. The Novavax vaccine is already approved in the European Union, Canada, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia.
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Since the original COVID-19 strain has become extinct, having been replaced by newer, more virulent variants, the announcement of a new vaccine designed to combat the ancestral strain of SARS-CoV-2 may seem strange. However, experts tell Salon that the Novavax vaccine is especially exciting, as it can be appealing to people who were hesitant to receive mRNA vaccines (including Moderna and Pfizer injections) due to misinformation. and fear. As of June 6, 2022, an estimated 66.7 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); which includes 76% of adults over the age of 18.
“Unfortunately, some of the other vaccines have been slandered by the vaccine movement because they are not protein-based,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center, told Salon. “This is a protein vaccine, it’s very similar to other vaccines that people usually get, so maybe those individuals who, unfortunately, have been influenced by misinformation about other vaccines may find this more appropriate.” Adalja added that while this vaccine is “more traditional”, it is also innovative in its own way.
“Unfortunately, some of the other vaccines have been slandered by the vaccine movement because they are not protein-based,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center, told Salon.
As Salon has previously reported, conspiracy theorists against vaccines have spread the misinformation that mRNA vaccines can change a person’s DNA. This is not true, as the vaccine basically sends instructions to our immune system on how to recognize the coronavirus Spike protein and fight it. The advantage of mRNA vaccines is that they are easier to produce in a shorter period of time and easier to modify in the future, hence their success in the coronavirus vaccine career. As for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, it uses an altered genetic fragment of the SARS-CoV-2 virus inserted into a cold virus so that it produces the Spike protein of the coronavirus, although it cannot make a person sick because it cannot be replicated in the body.
As Adalja pointed out, the Novavax vaccine is different from the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines and the Johnson & Johnson adenovirus vaccine because it uses protein technology. This means that the vaccine already contains a replica of the Spike protein that was created with moth cells and an adjuvant that boosts the immune system. Because Spike protein is already in the vaccine, it should not be made in a person’s body by the immune system itself. According to the results of the Novavax 30,000-person trial, the vaccine is 90% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 infections and is 100% protected against moderate to severe disease. In particular, these numbers were calculated before the era of the omicron variant of the pandemic.
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As Adalja, Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, said she hopes that if the vaccine is approved, it will be attractive to people who have doubts about the vaccine. ” any adult who has rejected the vaccine “. other vaccines for some reason, “Gandhi said.
In fact, while those who are fully vaccinated will not be re-vaccinated, and although approval would only be for a series of initial vaccinations, some experts hope that the Novavax vaccine can be used as a future booster.
“The reason I’m intrigued by the Novavax vaccine booster is because the Novavax vaccine is the real protein and is a much longer piece of protein and also includes what is called the receptor binding domain,” he said. dir Gandhi. “And that part of the receptor-binding domain tends to be quite conserved between variants, so that part of the Spike protein doesn’t change that much.”
As an example, Gandhi noted that in the omicron variant, the receptor-binding domain remains the same, despite its 32 mutations compared to the primary virus.
But at this point, would the country be better off with new vaccines that really target new variants? The omicron BA.2 subvariant is much more transmissible than previous variants such as delta and alpha, and vaccine efficacy appears to decrease with each subsequent variant.
Adalja said the answer to that question depends on what the vaccination goals are.
“If our goal is to prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death, vaccines aimed at the ancestral strain are holding up very well,” Adalja said. “But if you’re trying to prevent infections, obviously they can’t do as well as they could before in the omicron era.”
If the goal is to completely block transmission, Adalja believes that future vaccines targeting specific strains could be the most effective.
“I think an upgrade of the vaccine to be better targeted to the variants that are circulating should be a goal,” Adalja said.
An FDA review of Novavax documents raised concerns about the risk of vaccine-associated myocarditis and pericarditis; these conditions have also been associated with mRNA vaccines. However, the FDA seemed optimistic about how it would keep up with current variants.
“Relevant data to evaluate the effectiveness of [the Novavax vaccine] against the Omicron variant and underlining, including observational data on use in other countries where the vaccine has been deployed, are not currently available, “the FDA wrote. “The efficacy in the clinical trial of this vaccine is more likely to provide a significant level of protection against COVID-19 due to Omicron, in particular against more serious diseases.”
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