Moderna’s Covid-19 booster shot elicits a strong antibody response against the Omicron variant of coronavirus, appearing to increase antibody levels even further than a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
But Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s chief executive, on Monday said Moderna would also continue to invest in developing a vaccine targeted to the Omicron variant, in case it became necessary in the future, putting it into clinical trials early next year. A full dose of Moderna’s vaccine boosted antibody levels even further, by 83-fold. The company also announced safety data for the full dose booster, saying side effects were at similar levels to the previous two doses but slightly more frequent than for the half-dose.
Moderna’s half-dose booster contains more messengerRNA – the genetic code that allows the body to create the spike protein and generate an immune response – than Pfizer’s full dose.Working with scientists from the US National Institutes of Health, Moderna tested how antibodies from vaccine recipients taken 29 days after boosting reacted to a pseudovirus, engineered to include the mutations seen in the Omicron variant. The data will be published in a preprint paper.