AstraZeneca announced on Thursday that it expects to have a new version of its COVID-19 vaccine ready for use in the last quarter of this year, as drug manufacturers respond to emerging variants of the disease that may be more transmissible or resistant to existing vaccines.
The Anglo-Swedish company, which makes a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, said it is working with university scientists to tailor the vaccine to combat the new variants.
The researchers began this work months ago, when the variants were first discovered, said Mene Pangalos, head of biopharmaceutical research at AstraZeneca.
“We are moving quickly and we have a series of versions against the variants in the works that we will choose from as we go to the clinical side,” Pangalos said in a conference call with reporters.
For his part, the pharmaceutical company’s CEO, Pascal Soriot, defended the company’s efforts to develop and increase production of the vaccine amid warnings from the European Union and a preliminary study, which cast doubt on its ability to the injection to combat a variant of COVID-19 first discovered in South Africa.
While the launch of the AstraZeneca vaccine was not perfect, regulators in several countries have determined it to be safe and effective. The company will produce 100 million doses this month, Soriot said.
Only a handful of vaccines have been approved for widespread use out of the hundreds that began development last year, he emphasized.
“One hundred million doses in February means 100 million vaccines, which means hundreds of thousands of serious infections are avoided, and it also means thousands of deaths are avoided,” Soriot said.
Although the European Medicines Agency has approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for use by anyone over the age of 18, some European countries – including France and Germany – have recommended that people over 65 do not receive the vaccine due to limited data on its effectiveness in older adults.