Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine grants lasting response in early study
Johnson & Johnson’s experimental one-shot COVID19 vaccine generated a longlasting immune response in an early safety study, providing a glimpse at how it will perform in the real world as the company inches closer to approaching U.S. regulators for clearance.
More than 90% of participants made immune proteins, called neutralizing antibodies, within 29 days after receiving the shot, according to the report, and participants formed the antibodies within 57 days. The immune response lasted for the full 71 days of the trial.
“Looking at the antibodies, there should be good hope and good reason that the vaccine will work,” in the company’s late-stage clinical trial that’s soon to report results, J&J Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels said Tuesday in an interview.
The one-shot vaccine generates more neutralizing antibodies than a single dose of other front-runner COVID19 vaccines, all of which are two-shot regimens. But when compared with two shots of these rivals, the response to J&J’s single shot is in the same range, Mr. Stoffels said.
Interim results from the phase 1/2 trial of participants ages 18 and older were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The data expanded on more limited findings J&J first published in September.
J&J’s progress is being closely watched by top infectious disease experts because its vaccine has the potential to become the first that can protect people after just one shot, making massvaccination campaigns much easier. The company expects to get definitive efficacy data from a final-stage study by early next month, potentially leading to regulatory authorization by March.
The U.S. has granted emergency-use authorizations to two vaccines, one developed by Pfizer Inc. and its partner BioNTech SE, and the other by Moderna Inc. Both employ a technology called messenger RNA that has never before been used in an approved product, and each showed more than 90% efficacy against COVID-19 symptoms.