President of Moderna: Some COVID strains are ‘hiding better’ from vaccines

As new variants of COVID-19 pop up around the world, vaccine developers are keeping a close eye on how each will tolerate their doses.

On the radar, new strains of the virus come from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil – all of which have been discovered in the United States – and some are more concerning than others.

“As we follow the data on the pandemic, we do see that some of the new emerging strains are better off hiding from those vaccines,” said the Cambridge-based director of Moderna, Inc. Dr. Stephen Hoge on ABC’s “Good Morning America” ​​on Monday. “Right now, the good news is that the vaccines look like they are working against all emerging strains. That is good news. But there are a few … the South African is of course some concern, as it looks like he can hide from the vaccine a little better than others. “

Last week, Moderna announced that the company plans to conduct a clinical trial for a ‘booster’ injection to better combat the South African variant, after its studies found the vaccine stimulates a weaker immune response to the mutation than against others.

The company said its vaccine should still provide adequate protection against the variant. But the lower number of antibodies produced by the vaccine in light of the variant “may indicate a potential risk of a previous decline in immunity,” Moderna said in a statement.

“Our approach at Moderna will be to develop a booster vaccine so that if the South African variant or some other variant becomes a problem, we can provide a way to … prevent it from hiding from the vaccine,” High said.

Asked how Moderna is able to develop a vaccine to target new variants, Hoge said scientists are able to learn what a variant looks like thanks to sequence information.

He called that “one of the great advancements in science related to pandemic worldwide that is taking place.”

“Then what we get to do as a result of our technology, mRNA, is actually copy that information and paste it into our vaccine cassette, and then just start adding it to the vaccine so that when you get the vaccine, your immune system is also able to to identify the variant, ”said Hoge.