Sir John Bell, a professor at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, told CNBC Wednesday that he was confident that Covid-19 vaccines could be re-developed to provide effective protection against future mutations of the coronavirus.
Bell’s comments on “Closing Bell” come because global attention is focused on a strain of the virus that is widespread in the UK that can spread more easily than previous variants. It has since been discovered in Colorado and California.
“This is now going to be a game of cat and mouse,” said Bell, who, along with AstraZeneca, helped oversee Oxford vaccine development. The UK government on Wednesday approved the emergency use of the vaccine after granting limited approval to the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech earlier this month.
Studies are underway to officially determine whether the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine protects against the new virus strain, Bell said. “We think they probably can, but we just want to be absolutely sure.”
“Given the disease rate in the UK with the new variant … we will have many examples of people who have had the vaccine exposed to the virus, and we will be able to tell pretty soon about whether the vaccine is indeed protective against that strain , ”Added Bell.
In addition to the coronavirus variant found in Great Britain, a separate strain first found in South Africa has come into focus. Officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday it could circulate in America as well.
Bell told CNBC he believes the variant discovered in South Africa has mutations that make it “slightly more troubling” than the strain found in the UK. Nevertheless, Bell expressed confidence in how scientists will deal with any virus mutation that circumvents the protection of existing vaccines.
“If we have to make new vaccines, we can make them now that we’ve done the first work. I’m sure our friends with the RNA vaccines can do the same,” Bell said. The Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been developed using messenger RNA technology, a novel approach that uses genetic material to elicit an immune response. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vector viral vaccine uses a weakened version of a cold virus that causes infections in chimpanzees.
“We’re ready if we have to make another vaccine to approach it,” added Bell. He also noted that the development process to update vaccines probably won’t require the same large-scale clinical trials conducted this year, just immunogenicity studies to make sure it elicits an immune response.
It’s not uncommon for viruses to mutate, said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration who serves on Pfizer’s board of directors. “Some viruses, such as flu, evolve their surface proteins very quickly, so we need a different flu vaccine every season,” he told CNBC earlier this month.
Gottlieb also said at the time that he believes the existing vaccines will protect against the strain of virus transmitted in the UK because of the way the vaccines target the full peak protein of the coronavirus.
“We are developing antibodies against many different regions of that protein, so even if some of that protein were mutated and some antibodies no longer recognize it, there would be antibodies against other parts of that protein,” he said. “So this probably won’t slip past our vaccines that easily, but eventually we’ll have to update the vaccines.”
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a contributor to CNBC and serves on the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus and biotech company Illumina. Gottlieb is also Co-Chairman of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel”.