Fauci calls for development of pan-coronavirus and intranasal vaccines in fight against Covid variants – Endpoints News

Even as vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers plow a path to mar­ket for Omi­cron-spe­cif­ic boost­er shots this fall, NI­AID di­rec­tor An­tho­ny Fau­ci’s mes­sage is clear: “Our job is not done.”

Fau­ci, who al­so serves as chief med­ical ad­vi­sor to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, took the White House podi­um on Tues­day to of­fer a glimpse at where next-gen­er­a­tion vac­cines are head­ed — specif­i­cal­ly high­light­ing the need for pan-coro­n­avirus can­di­dates and mu­cos­al op­tions that can be ad­min­is­tered in­tranasal­ly.

“In­no­v­a­tive ap­proach­es are clear­ly need­ed to in­duce broad and durable pro­tec­tion against coro­n­avirus­es known and un­known,” he said.

At the end of last month, the FDA rec­om­mend­ed that vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers like Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na move for­ward with Omi­cron-spe­cif­ic for­mu­la­tions, which may be avail­able in ear­ly- to mid-fall.

Thanks to cur­rent vac­cines, we’ve avert­ed well over two mil­lion deaths and about a tril­lion dol­lars in health­care costs, Fau­ci said. How­ev­er, vac­cine de­vel­op­ment is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed, as we’re now see­ing “sub­lin­eages of sub­lin­eages” of Covid vari­ants.

“These in­jectable vac­cines do a great job at pre­vent­ing se­vere dis­ease, but they do lit­tle to pre­vent in­fec­tion and trans­mis­sion, and trans­mis­sion is the en­gine of vari­ant evo­lu­tion,” said Mark Praus­nitz, CSO of Mi­cron Bio­med­ical, which is work­ing on mi­cronee­dle ap­proach­es to vac­ci­na­tion.

Down the road, Fau­ci ad­vo­cat­ed for pan-coro­n­avirus vac­cines, or mu­cos­al op­tions that could po­ten­tial­ly stop trans­mis­sion in its tracks.

“When you have a mu­cos­al, and in this case, in­tranasal, what you do is you stim­u­late at the lo­cal lev­el,” Fau­ci said dur­ing the sum­mit, which was broad­cast live on Zoom. “The goal of that is not on­ly to pro­tect against dis­ease, but to pro­tect against ac­qui­si­tion and by ac­qui­si­tion, trans­mis­sion. And that’s re­al­ly the holy grail.”

Akiko Iwasa­ki

Cur­rent vac­cines in­duce ro­bust sys­temic im­mune re­spons­es, but do not in­duce a mu­cos­al re­sponse, ac­cord­ing to Akiko Iwasa­ki, an im­munol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. She’s al­so the co-founder of Xanadu Bio, a Yale spin­out look­ing to bring an in­tranasal Covid can­di­date in­to the clin­ic. Mu­cos­al vac­cines are de­signed to pre­vent a virus from ever get­ting to a host cell, like putting a guard out­side your house to pro­tect from in­vaders, Iwasa­ki said.

Iwasa­ki re­cent­ly co-au­thored a pa­per in Sci­ence Im­munol­o­gy along­side Scripps Re­search Trans­la­tion­al In­sti­tute founder Er­ic Topol that ad­vo­cates for an ac­cel­er­at­ed ini­tia­tive for in­tranasal Covid-19 vac­cines, sim­i­lar to Op­er­a­tion Warp Speed.

“We know from 200 years of vac­ci­nol­o­gy … that vac­cines that mim­ic nat­ur­al in­fec­tion tend to work best,” Praus­nitz said. “No one here to­day can tell you that mu­cos­al COVID vac­cines work, we’re not there yet. We need clin­i­cal ef­fi­ca­cy da­ta to an­swer that ques­tion, and that’s why we’re here.”

Paul Bur­ton

Man­u­fac­tur­ing is al­so “a key part of the fu­ture,” Mod­er­na’s CMO Paul Bur­ton said at the sum­mit, adding that the com­pa­ny has re­cent­ly struck deals to build new plants and R&D sites in Aus­tralia, the Unit­ed King­dom, Cana­da and Kenya.

“We have to con­tin­ue these dis­cus­sions, con­tin­ue these col­lab­o­ra­tions to in­still con­fi­dence,” Bur­ton said. “Get­ting that con­fi­dence and then the abil­i­ty to get these shots made in coun­tries and in­to peo­ple’s arms I think is how we’re go­ing to con­tin­ue to get out of the pan­dem­ic.”

Pfiz­er bio­phar­ma group pres­i­dent An­gela Hwang added that the de­vel­op­ers con­tin­ue to im­ple­ment lessons learned from the pan­dem­ic to make the process more ef­fi­cient.

“Prob­a­bly two and a half bil­lion peo­ple have re­ceived the Pfiz­er vac­cine,” she said. “That’s an in­cred­i­ble wealth of re­al world ev­i­dence that we’re sit­ting on. And so I think that we have a great op­por­tu­ni­ty, hav­ing that strong depth and breadth of da­ta, to use that to al­so help us to un­der­stand, how can we de­sign new ther­a­pies?”