How effective will Moderna's new vaccine be against the Ómicron variant

Since its appearance last November 2021, the Ómicron coronavirus variant has become the predominant one at the contagion level and has not stopped spreading around the world, becoming the protagonist of the incredible increase in COVID-19 cases.

Thanks to its evolution, it has the ability to escape the effectiveness of current vaccines or even the antibodies generated by a previous infection, which show rapid dissipation. However, there is one way to deal with Ómicron today and that is with a booster dose.

Meanwhile, scientists around the world are developing the second generation of vaccines to deal with the most contagious variants. Thus, the Moderna laboratory now announced that its new version of the COVID-19 vaccine, still under study, is generating a greater immune response against recent variants of the coronavirus compared to the approved product currently offered, according to preliminary data.

In particular, the variant-adapted vaccine increases the neutralizing antibodies against Omicron by 2.2 times compared to the standard vaccine. The US company has indicated in a statement that the version under study, called mRNA-1273,211, has generated a superior immune response against the Beta, Delta and Ómicron variants one month after administration in a booster dose of 50 micrograms.

The immunization offered by this 50 microgram version, tested on 300 patients, continued “for six months after administration against the Beta and Omicron variants” and had adverse effects similar to those of the approved product. “We are satisfied with this data for our first bivalent reinforcement candidate, mRNA.1273,211. We believe that these results validate our bivalent strategy, which we announced and started in February 2021. The results indicate that mRNA-1273,211 at doses of 50 µg induced higher antibody responses than the 50 µg boost of mRNA-1273, even though no additional variants of concern were included in the booster vaccine,” said Moderna Executive Director Stéphane Bancel.

The emergence of new mutated versions of the virus that causes covid-19 over the past year, such as the Delta and Ómicron variants, create a potential requirement for different technologies to provide a stronger immune system response.

“We have some data that your immune system's response to natural infection, but also to vaccination, decreases over time,” says Andrew Ustianowski, clinical leader of the Covid Vaccine Research Programme at the UK National Institute for Health Research. “We can see antibody responses and, to some extent, T cell responses decreasing over time. Therefore, one of the hopes of second-generation vaccines is that they can provide us with protection for a longer period than these first vaccines,” he added.

Release for September

Moderna, like other manufacturers of vaccines against COVID-19, has been developing serums that include mutations present in the new variants, but for now it is betting on another product as a candidate for the booster doses that it will soon offer in the northern hemisphere. Moderna's preferred solution is mRNA-1273,214, a prototype that is in an advanced stage of study and combines the serum of the original vaccine with another specific one against the Ómicron variant. It contains 32 mutations and is “the main candidate for the autumn boreal reinforcement of 2022″, according to Bancel.

As reported by the company in the statement, they expect to obtain more results on mRNA-1273,214 in the second quarter of this year in order to decide on the reinforcement of autumn 2022 in the northern hemisphere. The company's goal is to obtain a bivalent booster that maintains high levels of neutralizing antibodies while improving the amplitude of immunity to variants.

“Moderna is developing booster updates to address the ongoing evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including monovalent and bivalent vaccines targeting multiple variants of concern. The company's main focus has been on bivalent boosting to maintain high titers of neutralizing antibodies while improving the breadth of immunity to variants. The initial results of a phase 2/3 study to evaluate an updated bivalent booster incorporating more Omicron specific mutations (mRN-1273,214) are expected in the second quarter of this year,” the statement concluded.

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