Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech's vaccines are expected to remain effective against the Indian variant of the coronavirus, according to preliminary work by American scientists and made public on Monday, May 17.
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This research, conducted in the laboratory by the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the NYU Langone Center, has yet to be validated by peers before being published in a scientific journal. "
We concluded that the antibodies produced by the vaccines are a little weakened against these variants, but not enough to make us think that this will have a great effect on the protection conferred by the vaccines
", told AFP Nathaniel "
Ned
Landau, lead author of the study.
Scientists drew blood from people who had been vaccinated with either of these vaccines, the two main ones used in the United States (about 150 million Americans have received them). They then exposed these samples to a synthetic virus with the particular mutations of the B.1.617 and B.1.618 variants, both first identified in India. This mixture was then put in contact with laboratory cells, in order to observe how many would be infected.
On average, for the B.1.617 variant, the researchers observed a fourfold reduction in the amount of neutralizing antibodies, these Y-shaped proteins, generated by the immune system to block the entry of cells to the virus. For the B.1.618 variant, the reduction was threefold. “
In other words, some antibodies no longer work against variants, but you still have a lot of them that work,
” says Nathaniel Landau. "
There are enough of them doing the job that we think vaccines will remain highly
effective," he added. "
Our results give us confidence in the fact that current vaccines will confer protection against the variants identified so far,
" the study concludes.
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However, these laboratory experiments will need to be confirmed by studies in the real world.
And the researchers do not rule out that future, more resistant variants will emerge in the future.
They also showed that the Indian variants were able to attach better to the ACE2 receptor present on human cells, and which the virus uses to force entry.
This ability could be related to its greater transmissibility, compared to the original strain of the virus.