Modern Inc.
MRNA -0.86%
said Wednesday that the first study volunteers have received modified Covid-19 vaccines designed to better target a more contagious variant of the coronavirus, marking a milestone in the race to stay ahead of the changing pathogen.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts company, which uses one of the Covid-19 vaccines widely, plans to enroll 60 people to test the new injection.
The subjects had previously received the standard two doses of the original Moderna shot as part of an interim study that began last year. In the new part of the study, these adult volunteers will be boosted with Moderna’s modified vaccine, code-named mRNA-1273,351.
Moderna designed the modified shot to better target a highly transmissible strain of the virus that was first identified in South Africa and has spread elsewhere.
Some subjects will receive the variant vaccine only in the mid-phase or phase 2 study, while others will receive a single injection, code-named mRNA-1273,211, which contains both the variant vaccines and the original vaccines.
Moderna’s original Covid-19 vaccine, approved for use in the US in December, was highly effective in a large clinical trial, but showed signs of reduced potency in laboratory tests against the variant identified in South Africa.
Moderna said in January that the original vaccine still appears to offer some protection against that strain, but as a precaution, it has begun a new vaccine that can be given as a booster shot or in various combinations with the original vaccine.
Moderna and other companies are gearing up for the need for modified vaccines that can beat emerging variants of the virus. In addition to the strain identified in South Africa, other strains have been identified in the UK and Brazil that spread more easily than the earlier version of the virus.
Companies and researchers are concerned that the virus will continue to mutate to the point where it will escape the immunity of the original vaccines.
If Moderna’s variant vaccine testing is positive, it could seek U.S. regulatory approval in the third quarter, the company said.
Moderna is also testing whether giving humans a third dose of the original vaccine protects against variants.
More testing of Moderna’s variant vaccine is on the horizon. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases plans to initiate an early phase or phase 1 study of the modified vaccine, in collaboration with researchers in Seattle, Atlanta, Cincinnati and Nashville. The study would begin as early as this week, according to a report from last week in a federal research database.
Moderna manufactured and delivered doses of the variant vaccine for use in the NIAID study in February.
Write to Peter Loftus at [email protected]
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