Sir John Bell, a professor at Oxford University in the UK, told CNBC on Wednesday he was confident that Covid-19 vaccines could be rebuilt to provide effective protection against future coronavirus mutations.
Bell’s commentary on ‘Closing Bell’ is based worldwide on a virus system that is spreading widely in the UK, which can spread more easily than previous variants. It has meanwhile been detected in Colorado and California.
“It’s going to be a cat-and-mouse game now,” said Bell, who oversaw the development of the Oxford vaccine in collaboration with AstraZeneca. The British government on Wednesday granted the authorization for the use of vaccines after giving limited permission to Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine earlier this month.
Studies are underway to officially determine whether the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine protects against the new virus strain, Bell said. “We think they can probably do it, but we just want to be absolutely sure.”
“Given the level of disease in the UK with the new variant … we are going to have many examples of people who have had the vaccine exposed to the virus, and we will be able to tell you pretty quickly whether the vaccine is indeed protective against the tribe is, ”Bell added.
In addition to the coronavirus variant found in Great Britain, a separate strain first found in South Africa came into focus. Officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that it could spread to the United States.
Bell told CNBC he believes the variant discovered in South Africa has mutations that make it ‘slightly more worrying’ than the tensions that exist in the UK. Nevertheless, Bell expressed confidence in how scientists will deal with any virus mutation that would evade the protection provided by existing vaccines.
“If we have to make new vaccines, we can make them now that we’ve done the initial work. I’m sure our friends with the RNA vaccines can do the same,” Bell said. The Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been developed using Messenger RNA technology, a new approach that uses genetic material to elicit an immune response. Oxford-AstraZeneca’s viral vector vaccine uses an attenuated version of a cold virus that causes infections in chimpanzees.
“We are ready if we have to make another vaccine to approach it,” Bell added. He also noted that the development process to update vaccines probably does not require the same large-scale clinical trials done this year, but only immunogenicity studies to make sure it elicits an immune response.
It is not uncommon for viruses to mutate, according to Dr Scott Gottlieb, a former food and drug administration commissioner who serves on the board of directors of Pfizer. “Some viruses like flu develop their surface proteins very quickly, which is why we need a different flu vaccine every season,” he told CNBC earlier this month.
Gottlieb said he also believes that the existing vaccines will protect against the virus strain transmitted in the UK due to the way the vaccines target the entire protein of the coronavirus.
“We develop antibodies against many different regions of that protein, so even if one part of the protein is mutated and some antibodies no longer recognize it, there will be antibodies against other parts of the protein,” he said. “So it will probably not easily slip past our vaccines, but eventually we will have to update the vaccines.”
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a contributor to CNBC and is a member of the boards of directors of Pfizer, the compiler of genetic testing Tempus and the biotechnology company Illumina. Gottlieb also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean’s Healthy Sail Panel.