The FDA’s vaccine advisers meet later this month to weigh updating booster shots.
Moderna announced new data on Wednesday suggesting a new version of its COVID-19 vaccine will offer superior protection to its original formulation of shots, based on studying antibodies generated by their new boosters in blood samples of trial participants. The company said in a release that it plans to submit its data to the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks. If the FDA signs off, doses of the updated vaccine and boosters could be ready to ship «as early as August.»
Moderna’s announcement comes ahead of a meeting of the regulator’s outside vaccine advisers, scheduled for later this month, that will weigh key decisions around potential changes to COVID-19 boosters that may be administered this fall.
«As we look to the fall infection season with respiratory viruses, with SARS-CoV-2, and the ongoing circulation of Omicron and its subvariants, we believe strongly that this data supports an update of the vaccine from the sequence that we’ve been using from years ago», Moderna’s president Dr. Stephen Hoge told investors on Wednesday. Moderna’s data comes from testing a 50 microgram «bivalent» version of its vaccine. Unlike the current «monovalent» version of the vaccine, which was designed to target the original «ancestral» strain of the virus, Moderna’s new booster doses will add in a version of its vaccine targeted to the Omicron variant. The company also said the booster «was generally well-tolerated, with side effects comparable to a booster» of its original vaccine at the same size.
