The Omicron vaccine has been put into production in March and can be used Zhang Wenhong: The vaccine received every year is not a good vaccine

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said Monday that the company's specific vaccine against the Omiljung variant will be ready in March and is now in production.

Companies have begun to invest in the development of a broad-spectrum and universal coronavirus vaccine, hoping to produce a protective effect against multiple coronaviruses by vaccinating one vaccine at a time in the future.

There is still no clear scientific basis for the need for enhanced vaccination of the fourth dose of the vaccine. Professor Zhang Wenhong, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases and director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, recently said that the vaccine that needs to be vaccinated every year cannot be called a successful vaccine.

Whether sustained vaccination is needed remains uncertain

Burra said that while uncertain how the vaccines will be used, the company is prepared to take some production risks because he believes there will be some countries that will need them.

"Our goal is to produce a vaccine that better prevents protection against Infection in Ami kerong." Burra said. He also said the vaccine will also provide protection against other covid-19 variants that are circulating.

According to real-world research data from the UK Health Safety Agency, the mRNA vaccine from Pfizer and Moderna was only about 10% effective in preventing Omiljung-symptomatic infection within 20 weeks of the second dose. After the third dose of booster vaccination, the effectiveness in preventing symptomatic infections increased to about 75 per cent.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House's chief medical adviser, said last December that there was no evidence to support the need for a specific vaccine specifically targeting the Omicron strain, as existing booster vaccines are well suited to combat the variant.

Pfizer's attitude towards whether a fourth dose of the vaccine is necessary has also changed compared to before. Burra said Monday that he is still unsure whether a fourth dose of booster vaccine is needed, having previously predicted that people could be given a fourth dose earlier than expected when the Ami kerong variant appeared early in the morning.

But Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel is still ready to vaccinate people with the Omicron-specific vaccine this fall. The company's Omicron-specific vaccine, which the company has developed, will soon enter clinical trials, is still being discussed whether the vaccine needs to contain other antiviral components.

"Vaccine development must be ahead of the virus." Banksell said. He also said that many governments are ready to be vaccinated regularly against the virus, and Moderna expects to provide 2 billion to 3 billion doses of COVID-19 booster vaccine this year.

But only Israel has begun to provide a fourth dose of booster vaccine to people over the age of 60 and at-risk for people with compromised immune systems and health care workers. The Israeli study found that after the fourth dose of vaccination, antibodies against the new crown virus increased fivefold every week.

The World Health Organization has set a target of 70 percent of the world's population to be vaccinated against COVID-19 this year, but vaccination rates in many countries remain low, largely because vaccines are not available.

Professor Zhang Wenhong said when talking about the future vaccination strategy a few days ago: "The evidence for judging the need for continuous vaccination against the new crown vaccine is still insufficient, for example, in the United States, natural mild infections are becoming more and more common, and whether vaccination is needed in the future depends on whether the symptoms of the disease will be more serious." ”

Zhang Wenhong also pointed out that most vaccines do not need to be vaccinated every year, and the vaccines that need to be vaccinated every year are not successful vaccines, such as influenza vaccines. Due to the rapid mutation of influenza viruses, existing influenza vaccines are only 40 to 60 percent effective in preventing infection, and even less than 10 percent effective by the end of the flu season.

According to the CDC, from 2010 to 2020, influenza kills 10,000 to 50,000 people in the United States each year, with the maximum number of infections exceeding 40 million per year.

Broad-spectrum generic vaccine development is on the agenda

Scientists have long wanted to invent a universal influenza vaccine that can be effective for a long time in a single vaccination, and companies including Pfizer and Moderna are also using new mRNA technologies to try to develop a universal influenza vaccine.

Banser said that about 10 respiratory viruses cause people to be hospitalized every year, and some diseases similar to flu symptoms are not well known to the public, such as RSV respiratory syncytial virus.

"We believe there is a need for a vaccine that contains all of these different antiviral components at once, that is capable of fighting influenza, RSV and COVID-19 at the same time, and that is specific for the strains circulating in the season." "That's what we're working towards," Banser said. ”

Moderna is developing an antiviral vaccine for RSV and an anti-flu vaccine, and Bansell said it now hopes to quickly integrate the two platforms.

Due to the flexibility and speed of mRNA technology, in the future, only the same basic component of the vaccine needs to be improved every year to obtain an upgraded version of the vaccine. "In my opinion, it's a bit like you can get an annual upgrade by adding more ingredients to the same vial." "It is also possible to adjust for virus strains circulating in different countries and regions, which greatly shortens the time cycle of vaccine production," Banser said. ”

Both Moderna and Pfizer are conducting Phase I clinical trials of a quadrivalent seasonal mRNA flu vaccine, but early clinical trial results have been less than ideal. To this end, companies will continue to increase R&D spending. The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) allocates approximately $220 million in annual grants for the development of a universal influenza vaccine.

Gao Fu, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has also repeatedly stressed the importance of developing universal vaccines. "Scientists and public health experts around the world are struggling to find a universal vaccine for a coronavirus," he said. It is best to cover all kinds of coronaviruses with a single shot, but a good solution has not yet been found. We look forward to China's breakthrough in the development of universal vaccines. ”

In August last year, the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Shanghai Junshi Biological Research Team published a broad-spectrum monoclonal antibody research on the fight against the new coronavirus, reporting for the first time a blocking antibody that targets a variety of coronavirus invasion receptors ACE2, which can effectively prevent and treat the infection of the new crown and its variant strains with host cells and model animals.

But the researchers say broad-spectrum vaccines are more difficult to achieve than broad-spectrum antibodies. "The difficulty of the vaccine lies in the drift and conversion of antigens in the future, we don't know, and the vaccine must have a good prediction if it wants to be widely covered, which depends on science and luck." A person in charge of a biomedical company engaged in vaccine research and development told the first financial reporter.

Professor Ying Tianlei of the Basic Medical College of Fudan University also told the first financial reporter: "It is very difficult to achieve a broad-spectrum vaccine, because after the vaccine is played, it cannot be guaranteed that it will only produce broad-spectrum antibodies, which will lead to dilution of broad-spectrum antibody concentrations and insufficient potency." ”

On Monday, a T-cell immunology study from Imperial College London offered new ideas for the development of the next generation of broad-spectrum vaccines. Through a study of 52 family members clustering infections, the researchers found that the common influenza coronavirus infection can produce a high level of T-cell immunity, which can effectively resist the new crown infection.

The study was published in Nature Communications. Professor Ajit Lalvani, co-author of the study, said that the internal proteins of the new coronavirus targeted by T cells could provide alternative targets for the development of the next generation of vaccines. Most of the current COVID-19 vaccines are developed against viral spike proteins, and due to rapid mutation of the virus, the components targeted by the vaccine will fail.

"In contrast, we found that protective T cells targeted much fewer mutations in the internal protein." Lalvani said, "We expect that new vaccines containing these more conservative internal proteins will induce a broader protective T cell response, thereby preventing current and future COVID-19 variants." ”