Pfizer’s Covid-19 Vaccine Appears to Work Against Mutation in New Coronavirus Strains, Study Finds

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The two strains share a mutation known as N501Y that scientists are concerned could allow the virus to evade the immune protection generated by a vaccine.
In research posted online Thursday, scientists found that antibodies from people who had received the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine “showed no reduction in neutralization activity” against a version of the virus carrying the N501Y mutation, which they have in the lab made.

To do this, researchers tested the virus against blood from 20 people who had received two doses of the vaccine as part of a clinical trial.

The N501Y mutation resides in the spike protein of the coronavirus – the same structure that vaccines target. The virus uses this protein to invade the cells it attacks.

Here's how mutations can help the coronavirus bypass vaccines

This particular mutation appears to help the virus attach to human cells, which may in part explain why these new strains appear to be more transmissible. But it’s just one of many mutations in both strains that scientists are concerned about could make the virus less susceptible to vaccines or treatments.

The study – conducted by researchers at Pfizer and the University of Texas Medical Branch – does not test the full range of these mutations, nor has it been peer-reviewed.

While viruses are expected to mutate – often in a way that is neutral or even harmful to the virus – experts say the whole is not just the sum of its parts: some mutations are known to interact, decreasing and then the shape or function of structures such as the spike protein.

“A limitation of this study is that the mutation was tested separately,” Deborah Dunn-Walters, chair of the Covid-19 and immunology task force of the British Society for Immunology, said in a statement. She noted that mutations that may have a compound effect “should be tested together.”

Because people usually make more than one type of antibody to a virus, experts say such a mutation is unlikely to make the virus completely resistant to a vaccine. However, experts aren’t too sure that the new strains won’t have any impact at all.

“We will need to see effective protection against new variants in participants in the ongoing clinical trials to ensure the vaccine is equally effective,” said Alexander Edwards, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Reading pharmacy school in the UK. said in a statement. Neither Edwards nor Dunn-Walters were involved in the new investigation.

If a virus is more transmissible or less susceptible to a vaccine, experts say this could also raise the bar for the number of people who would need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.

In a statement last month, Pfizer said it had conducted similar tests on “multiple mutant strains. To date, we have found consistent coverage of all strains tested.”

It will be important to continue to monitor “the importance of changes to vaccine coverage,” the researchers wrote in the new paper.

That’s because of “the possibility that a future mutation … will necessitate a change in the vaccine strain.” Both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines use genetic technology that allows the vaccines to be quickly modified to account for mutations, they noted.

In a statement, BioNTech said Friday it and Pfizer are “encouraged by these early findings of in vitro research,” but stressed that “more data is needed” to see how effective the vaccine is in preventing diseases caused by new variants. .

CNN’s Jacqueline Howard and Maggie Fox contributed to this report.

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