Modern Inc.
MRNA -0.86%
said Wednesday that the study’s first volunteers received modified Covid-19 vaccines designed to better target a more contagious coronavirus variant, marking a milestone in the race to stay ahead of the mutant pathogen.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts company, which has one of the Covid-19 vaccines widely in use, plans to enroll 60 people to test the new vaccine.
Participants had previously received the two standard doses of the original Moderna injection as part of an intermediary study that began last year. In the new part of the study, these adult volunteers will receive a booster injection containing the modified Moderna vaccine, codenamed mRNA-1273.351.
Moderna designed the modified injection to better target a highly transmissible strain of the virus that was first identified in South Africa and spread elsewhere.
Some individuals will receive the variant vaccine alone in the intermediate stage, or Phase 2, of the study, while others will receive a single injection, codenamed mRNA-1273.211, containing the variant and the original vaccines.
Moderna’s original Covid-19 vaccine, authorized for use in the United States in December, was highly effective in a large clinical study, but showed signs, in laboratory tests, of reduced potency against the variant identified in South Africa.
Moderna said in January that her original vaccine still appears to offer some protection against this strain, but as a precaution she embarked on a new vaccine that could be given as a booster injection or in various combinations with the original vaccine.
Moderna and other companies are preparing for the need for modified vaccines that can combat emerging variants of the virus. In addition to the strain identified in South Africa, other strains have been identified in the United Kingdom and Brazil that spread more easily than the previous version of the virus.
Companies and researchers are concerned that the virus will continue to mutate to the point of escaping the immunity conferred by the original vaccines.
If Moderna’s variant vaccine test is positive, it could seek US regulatory authorization in the third quarter, the company said.
Moderna is also testing whether giving people a third dose of their original vaccine offers protection against variants.
Further tests of the vaccine variant of Moderna are on the horizon. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is planning to start an early-stage, or Phase 1, study of the modified vaccine, working with researchers in Seattle, Atlanta, Cincinnati and Nashville. The study was scheduled to begin this week, according to a post last week in a federal study database.
Moderna manufactured and distributed doses of the variant vaccine for use in the NIAID trial in February.
Write to Peter Loftus at [email protected]
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