Can the vaccines be adapted to Omicron?

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Both Moderna and BioNTech have already announced that they are working on such an adaptation to Omicron.

One of the advantages of the technology behind these vaccines is that they are relatively easy to modify. Only a new blueprint of the spike protein needs to be produced, not the protein itself. Both Moderna and BioNTech have already announced that they are working on such an adaptation to Omicron.

Moderna already shared its strategy against the new variant on Nov. 26. The company wants to proceed in parallel steps. On the one hand, it will test whether the existing vaccine is also effective against the new variant. Stéphane Bancel, head of the pharmaceutical company, was cautious in his comments to the Financial Times on November 30. He said he expected a “significant decrease” in efficacy.
Meanwhile, the effect of a double booster dose is to be studied. Instead of the usual 50 micrograms of the mRNA, 100 micrograms were administered to the test subjects in a study. In the process, they developed the highest antibody levels to date against previous Corona variants. The company now plans to investigate how well the serum of the study participants also neutralizes the Omicron variant. In addition, Moderna has announced that it has already developed two booster candidates that contain some of the mutations present in Omicron. These, too, are now to be tested for their protective effect against Omicron. Finally, the company said it is already in the process of developing a booster candidate called mRNA-1273.529 that is specifically adapted to the new variant.

On Nov. 29, BioNTech, a company based in Mainz, Germany, reported it was also working on a vaccine adaptation, in addition to ongoing laboratory tests to study Omicron. “In order not to lose time, we are tackling these two tasks in parallel until the data are available and we have more information on whether the vaccine should be adapted or not,” a BioNTech spokeswoman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

If it turns out that the vaccine should be changed, the goal is to do so within six weeks and deliver first batches of an adapted vaccine within 100 days, she said. In that event, the company said it has already started clinical trials with vaccines specifically designed for variants to collect data on safety and tolerability. According to BioNTech, these could be submitted to the regulatory authorities as sample data.

However, BioNTech founder Uğur Şahin still believes that the current vaccine also offers good protection against Omicron. “We think it is likely that vaccinated people will have significant protection against severe diseases caused by Omicron,” he told Reuters news agency. “We expect that protection to be even more pronounced once people have had their third vaccination.”