Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine produced immune responses in an early-stage clinical trial

Novavax has highlighted that its Coronavirus vaccine candidate NVX-CoV2373 produced immune responses in an early-stage clinical trial, which has resulted in shares within the company increasing.

The results come from Novavax’s Phase I section of their Phase I and II trial, which assessed the vaccine at two dose ranges, 25µg and 5µg, with and without an adjuvant in one-hundred and thirty-one adults, among the ages of eighteen and fifty-nine years, with a healthy lifestyle.

Novavax highlighted that soaring levels of antibodies, against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, were created by NVX-CoV2373, after one dose of the vaccine. Furthermore, after two doses, participants treated with the vaccine demonstrated increased levels of antibodies, in comparison to the levels assessed in recovered COVID-19 patients. Novavax further added that the introduction of its Matrix-M adjuvant in the early stage study improved the efficacy of the vaccine. Also, NVX-CoV2373’s antibody responses were associated with neutralisation tiers, which implies that a substantial proportion of the antibodies were operative.

Some participants experienced symptoms such as tiredness, headache and myalgia.

Novavax was awarded one-point-six billion dollars by the US government at the start of the month, to accelerate the development and research of the vaccine candidate. As a result, if it continues to prove useful in further clinical studies, Novavax will produce one-million doses of its vaccine by the start of 2021.

President, Research and Development at Novavax, Gregory Glenn, stated: “The Phase I data demonstrates that NVX-CoV2373 with our Matrix-M adjuvant is a well tolerated COVID-19 vaccine with a robust immunogenicity profile. Using a stringent wild type virus assay performed by investigators at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, NVX-CoV2373 elicited neutralising antibody titers greater than those observed in a pool of COVID-19 patients with clinically significant disease.”