Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine generated a lasting immune response to the deadly bug in an early clinical trial, the pharmaceutical giant said.
More than 90 percent of the study’s 805 participants had neutralizing antibodies that protect against COVID-19 29 days after receiving a single dose of the vaccine, the New Jersey-based drugmaker said Wednesday.
The antibodies lingered for at least 71 days in participants, ages 18 to 55, according to interim results published in the New England Journal of Medicine. J&J said it will have data on the durability of immunity in people over the age of 65 later this month.
The early data showed signs of promise for Johnson & Johnson’s one-time vaccine, even as the company reportedly had a problem producing the vaccinations.
J&J said it expects to release the results of its pivotal vaccine trial at a late stage by the end of this month. It will then ask the Food and Drug Administration to release the recording for emergency use if the data shows it to be safe and effective.
Early safety data showed that people who responded to the vaccine generally got better within 24 hours, the company said. The most common side effects were headache, muscle pain, fatigue, and injection site pain.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is different from the Pfizer and Moderna injections that are distributed all over the country.
The latter companies’ vaccines require two doses and use genetic material called messenger RNA to direct the body to make a small amount of coronavirus spike proteins, triggering an immune response. Johnson & Johnson’s only needs one dose and delivers the peak proteins via a knocked out cold virus that cannot infect the recipient.
J&J also studied a two-dose regimen of its vaccine and found that the second dose, 56 days apart, caused “a more than two-fold increase in antibodies to COVID-19,” the company said.
Shares of Johnson & Johnson were up 1.7 percent in premarket trading Thursday to $ 160.68 as of 7:42 a.m.