To kill two birds with one stone, this is the objective that the biotech Novavax has set for itself by preparing a vaccine capable of fighting against influenza and Covid-19 disease. The US biotech company is currently carrying out its first animal trials.
First a vaccine against the flu, called NanoFlu, then another but this time against Covid-19, bearing the name NVX-CoV2373. By combining them, Novavax is on the verge of revolutionizing research against these viruses. According to biotech, this unique vaccine is being tested on animals and the results are encouraging, the American company announced.
The two remedies are not yet licensed worldwide, but have both been tested separately in Phase 3 clinical trials, this time in humans.
A vaccine against two pathologies
“We believe that this new candidate vaccine resulting from a combination […] could be an important future tool in the long term fight against these two respiratory viruses ”said Gregory Glenn, head of research and development at Novavax. To achieve these positive results in animals, the biotech company first administered the serum containing the two products to rodents, specifically ferrets and hamsters. In ferrets, the level of antibodies against the two viruses were similar compared to those elicited by sera administered separately. As for the hamsters, the latter were voluntarily exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. “An examination of the viral load in the upper and lower respiratory tract showed that little or no virus was detected four days after infection”, comments Novavax.
End-of-year tests on humans
The biotech hopes to begin testing on humans, initially in small groups, “ by the end of the year “, she stressed. This unique vaccine uses a technology different from those employed by the vaccines we already know, Messenger RNA (Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech) or adenovirus (AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson). With Novavax, it is a vaccine “Subunit”, based on proteins that trigger immune protection without viruses. In March, the American company announced that its serum was 89.7% effective against severe forms of Covid-19, according to clinical trials conducted in England with 15,000 individuals aged 18 and over.
