Moderna said it expects to have clinical data for a COVID-19 booster that protects against the original strain of the virus as well as omicron by the end of June.
Moderna Inc. MRNA, -1.31% said Tuesday that it expects to have clinical data for a COVID-19 booster that protects against the original strain of the virus as well as omicron by the end of June, with the expectation that this would be the shot that is rolled out to Americans in the fall.
One of Moderna’s booster candidates is a mix of the original vaccine with omicron. That shot is currently in a Phase 2/3 clinical trial, with data expected sometime in the second quarter. The company’s other booster candidate pairs the original wild-type vaccine with beta, a strain that was first identified in South Africa and declared a variant of concern in December 2020. Beta is no longer circulating.
“Cross-neutralization of multiple variants and the potency and durability of the antibody response appear to be advantages of bivalent booster vaccines that contain both the ancestral SARS-CoV-2 and variant spike sequences,” the Moderna scientists wrote. “Such vaccines may represent an important strategy as we respond to emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants.”