Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine Works Against Mutations Found in U.K, South Africa Variants, Lab Study Finds
January 27 2021 - 10:25PM
Dow Jones News
By Daniela Hernandez
A Pfizer Inc. laboratory study found that coronavirus mutations
identified in the U.K. and South Africa had only small impacts on
the effectiveness of antibodies generated by the company's Covid-19
vaccine.
The antibodies were slightly less effective against mutations in
the variant identified in South Africa, according to the study. It
was posted Wednesday on the online server bioRxiv, which publishes
scientific papers before they have been peer-reviewed.
Researchers have been racing to assess whether Covid-19 vaccines
and drugs will still work against new variants, as governments roll
out shots they hope will allow schools, businesses and other
establishments to reopen.
Pfizer's findings are consistent with other preliminary results
reported in recent weeks by several research groups looking at the
effectiveness of available vaccines against the new variants.
The research is still preliminary, however. Pfizer's study was
conducted in a lab and tested only a subset of mutations found in
the variants, but not the variants themselves. Also, the
researchers didn't assess whether their results were statistically
significant.
Yet these and other results suggest that the impact of the
variants on the shots will be "relatively modest, which is good
news for the vaccines," said Jason McLellan, a structural biologist
at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied how
coronavirus proteins interact with antibodies and wasn't involved
in the Pfizer study.
Pfizer said the "findings do not indicate the need for a new
vaccine to address the emerging variants." The company said,
however, that it and partner BioNTech SE were prepared to respond
to a vaccine-resistant version of the virus.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine uses a new technology named
messenger RNA, after the molecular couriers of genetic
instructions, which allows developers to make more rapid changes to
their vaccines than more traditional techniques. The other vaccine
authorized in the U.S., from biotech Moderna Inc., also uses mRNA
technology.
A recent preliminary study by Moderna, in collaboration with
scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, showed
antibodies generated by its vaccine were less effective at binding
the mutated spike proteins of the South African variant. The
researchers didn't find a difference for the U.K. variant's spike
proteins. The coronavirus uses its spike proteins, which stud its
surface, to enter and infect cells. The proteins are key targets of
antibodies.
As a precaution, the company said it was developing a booster
shot for the South Africa variant.
The new Pfizer study found that antibodies generated by its
vaccine were slightly better at binding versions of the virus that
had some of the mutations found in the U.K. variant.
That could be because the scientists tested their U.K.
variant-like viruses against a variant that lacked an older, but
key mutation that increases transmissibility, but makes the virus
more susceptible to antibodies, Dr. McLellan said.
The gold standard would be to test antibodies against the
variants themselves, he and others said, to understand how their
unique constellation of mutations might affect natural immunity or
protection from a vaccine.
Those studies are ongoing in labs around the world.
Pfizer researchers, who worked with scientists at the University
of Texas Medical Branch, didn't perform statistical-significance
tests, a key way scientists assess if their results are due to
chance and have real-world importance, another important
limitation, scientists not involved in the study said.
Rafael Casellas, a molecular immunologist at the NIH, said it
was important to keep monitoring the evolution of the coronavirus
to assess whether vaccines and other therapies will need to be
updated, or whether booster shots will be necessary. "We can't take
this virus lightly," he said. "We just don't have enough
information so we need to be cautious."
Write to Daniela Hernandez at daniela.hernandez@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 27, 2021 22:10 ET (03:10 GMT)
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