Good News, US Researchers Say Special Booster Dose Of Omicron Variant May Not Be Necessary

Illustration of a COVID-19 vaccination. (Wikimedia Commons/MDGovpics)

JAKARTA - A monkey study comparing Moderna's current COVID-19 booster with an Omicron-specific booster, showed no significant difference in protection, suggesting an Omicron-specific booster may not be needed, United States Government researchers reported on Friday.

The study involved monkeys vaccinated with two doses of Moderna vaccine who were dosed nine months later, with either a conventional Moderna booster or one that specifically targeted the Omicron variant.

The researchers tested various aspects of the animals' immune response and exposed them to the virus. They found both boosters resulted in a comparable and significant increase in neutralizing antibody responses, against all variants of concern, including the Omicron variant, according to the study posted on bioRxiv prior to peer review.

Moderna Inc., and BioNTech/Pfizer Inc., have begun testing the special Omicron booster of their vaccine in human clinical trials.

"This is very, very good news," Daniel Douek, a vaccine researcher at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who co-led the research, said in a telephone interview.

"That means we don't have to radically redesign the vaccine to make it an Omicron vaccine."

Douek said he believes the reason is because the original and Omicron-specific vaccines are cross-reactive, meaning they can recognize many different variants.

The results are similar to studies testing Moderna's boosters targeting the Beta variant, said Dr. John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College who was not involved in the research.

"Let's see what human data shows. Monkey data is generally pretty predictive, but you're going to need human data," Moore said.

One of the main advantages of monkey research is that researchers can scale up animals and then infect them with viruses and measure immune responses, something that cannot be done in human trials, Moore said.