A new type of vaccine COVID-19 is about to be launched around the world. Although it will not replace the highly successful vaccines available today. It could make a difference in the course of the pandemic, especially in poorer countries.
These new vaccines are called protein subunit vaccines.
They work by injecting people with a small portion of the virus. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccine, that small portion is the so-called critical peak protein for the virus to enter cells.
An advantage of protein subunit vaccines is that they tend to be very stable, so they do not require freezers for storage. A normal refrigerator is adequate. This greatly facilitates the distribution of the vaccine.
“We assumed that protein subunit vaccines would play an important role in accelerating the development of a COVID vaccine.” Says Julie McElrath, director of the division of vaccines and infectious diseases at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. McElrath said the confidence from her and her colleagues came from the fact that there were already subunit vaccines on the market for infectious diseases.
Three vaccine technologies
When Operation Warp Speed started spending billions of dollars to facilitate the development of a COVID-19 vaccine. It chose three vaccine technologies to support: the mRNA vaccines being developed by Pfizer and Moderna. A viral vector vaccine proposed by Johnson & Johnson, and protein subunit vaccines to be manufactured by Sanofi and Novavax.
The first two technologies were successful and there are now billions of doses of vaccines in this country and around the world.
A year ago, Novavax was confident that its vaccine would also be available
“We have a lot of people working to scale up our vaccine,” Gregg Glenn, Novavax president of research and development, said in an interview in September 2020. “I am very optimistic by the end of the year we will have many products and we are talking about more than 2 billion doses in 2021 ”.
But Glenn’s optimism was wrong. A large vaccine study took longer than expected to complete, and the company ran into manufacturing problems.
Sanofi also stumbled upon its protein subunit vaccine.
McElrath is convinced that subunit vaccines can still play an important role in controlling the pandemic. “It’s just that they are a little behind the others,” he says.
“Having multiple options is always a good idea,” says Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
Ellebedy primarily studies mRNA vaccines. He says these are new and scientists are still trying to learn their strengths and weaknesses. To do that, it would be helpful to have a large group of people vaccinated with a more familiar vaccine to compare.
“From a scientific perspective, it would definitely be great to have a subunit vaccine,” he says.
That day seems to be coming. Large studies of the vaccine have shown that it works extremely well and, as of now, there are no safety concerns.
Novavax has begun applying for an emergency use authorization with various regulatory agencies.
“We have applied for clearance around the world, including in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand,” says Silvia Taylor, vice president of global corporate affairs and investor relations at Novavax.
These filings mean that Novavax believes it has licked up its manufacturing woes. Because getting a license requires convincing regulators that you can reliably produce the vaccine.
“So we are extremely confident that with all that we have learned over the past year, as well as the experience of all our partners, we will be in an excellent position to produce more than 2 billion doses by 2022.”
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