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Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin, the founders of Biontech (September 17, 2021)
Photo: Christoph Hardt / imago images/Future Image
The Mainz-based pharmaceutical company Biontech and its US partner Pfizer say they have developed an effective vaccine against the new variants of the corona virus.
According to the first study results, the vaccine performed well against the highly contagious variant.
A booster vaccination with the partners' Omicron vaccine candidates triggered a significantly stronger immune response than the company's original active ingredient, Biontech and Pfizer announced on Saturday.
"We think we have two very strong omicron-matched candidates," said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
Vaccinations were well tolerated by study participants
The results come from a study of 1,234 people aged 56 and over.
The vaccinations were well tolerated by the participants.
According to the companies, the data suggest that both adapted omicron candidates neutralize the recently prevalent BA.4 and BA.5 variants, albeit to a lesser extent than BA.1.
Biontech and Pfizer want to collect more data to find out how well the boosters work against the variants that have been circulating recently.
The two companies plan to bring an Omikron booster to market as soon as possible, if it is approved by the regulatory authorities.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is planning a meeting with experts next Tuesday to discuss the best composition for the fall booster vaccine.
The US biotech group Moderna had already published data on its omicron booster.
Accordingly, this also performed well against newer omicron subvariants and achieved a strong immune reaction.
Moderna intends to submit applications to regulators in the coming weeks to seek approval for the fall season vaccine.
Concern is currently increasing about new coronavirus variants - the number of infections in Germany and many other countries has risen again.
ktz/afp/Reuters