Sir John Bell, a professor at the University of Oxford in the UK, told CNBC on Wednesday that he was confident that Covid-19 vaccines could be remade to provide effective protection against future coronavirus mutations.
Bell’s comments on “Closing Bell” occur at a time when global attention is focused on a strain of the virus that circulates widely in the United Kingdom and can spread more easily than previous variants. It has since been detected in Colorado and California.
“This is going to be a cat and mouse game now,” said Bell, who helped oversee the development of the vaccine in Oxford in partnership with AstraZeneca. The UK government granted this emergency vaccine authorization on Wednesday after issuing limited authorization for the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech earlier this month.
Studies are underway to officially determine whether the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine protects against the new strain of the virus, Bell said. “We think they probably can, but we just want to be absolutely sure.”
“Given the level of disease in the UK with the new variant … we will have many examples of people who have received the vaccine and will be exposed to the virus, and we will be able to speak quickly about whether the vaccine is indeed protective against this strain,” added Bell.
In addition to the coronavirus variant found in Britain, a separate strain first found in South Africa came into focus. Officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday that it may also be circulating in America.
Bell told CNBC that he believes the variant discovered in South Africa has mutations that make it “a little more worrying” than the strain prevalent in the UK. However, Bell expressed confidence about how scientists will deal with any mutation of the virus that falls outside the protection provided by existing vaccines.
“If we have to make new vaccines, we can do them now that we have done the initial work. I am sure that our friends with the RNA vaccines can do the same,” said Bell. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were developed using messenger RNA technology, a new approach that uses genetic material to elicit an immune response. The Oxford-AstraZeneca viral vector vaccine uses a weakened version of a common cold virus that causes infections in chimpanzees.
“We are ready if we need to make another vaccine to get close to that,” added Bell. He also noted that the development process for updating vaccines is unlikely to require the same large-scale clinical trials conducted this year, only immunogenicity studies to ensure it triggers an immune response.
It is not uncommon for viruses to mutate, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration who serves on Pfizer’s board of directors. “Some viruses like the flu develop their surface proteins very quickly and that is why we need a different flu vaccine each season,” he told CNBC earlier this month.
Gottlieb then said that he also believes that existing vaccines will protect against the strain of the virus that is being transmitted in the UK because of the way vaccines target the whole spike protein of the coronavirus.
“We are developing antibodies to many different regions of this protein, so even if a part of that protein were mutated and some antibodies no longer recognize it, there would be antibodies to other parts of that protein,” he said. “So this is probably not going to escape our vaccines very easily, but eventually we will have to update them.”
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a contributor to CNBC and a board member of Pfizer, the genetic testing startup Tempus and the biotechnology company Illumina. Gottlieb also serves as co-president of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings ′ and the “Healthy Sail Panel” at Royal Caribbean.