British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca says a third dose of its Covid-19 vaccine "significantly" raises the level of antibodies against Omicron.
The announcement after the results of a study conducted in the laboratory.
"The third booster dose of the vaccine neutralized the Omicron variant to similar levels as the second dose against the Delta variant," AstraZeneca said in a statement.
THE TRIAL IN ITALY - In the meantime, the experimentation on mice of the specific vaccine against the Omicron variant has begun in Italy. Developed by the biotech company Takis. This was announced by the same company.
After the announcement of the platform's availability, made on November 29 by the same company, Takis begins the evaluation phase of the Covid-eVax vaccine against the Omicron variant in preclinical models. The vaccine will be evaluated both on its own and as a subsequent dose or booster in animals that have already received other vaccines against the original SarsCoV2 virus.
"Thanks to the flexibility of our DNA technology, we have shown that in a few days it is possible to modify the vaccine according to the genetic sequence of the variants and produce it for experimentation", notes Luigi Aurisicchio, administrator and scientific director of Takis.
The role of vaccines and boosters, notes the company, is very important to counter the Omicron variant, considering its greater diffusive capacity and in light of the low efficacy of monoclonal antibodies, documented in some recent studies.
The Covid-eVax vaccine may be a tool to fight the SarsCoV2 virus and its variants, Aurisicchio notes. "It will be important - he continues - to characterize the specificity of the immune response that will be obtained with this version of our vaccine".
Omicron has accumulated a series of mutations that worry scientists all over the world and for the Italian company "Omicron is a test bed for us". "Our final goal - the conclusion - is to create a production chain that starts from the identification and study of the variant but also of any other pathogen to arrive at the production of the vaccine in the shortest possible time and equip Italy with the necessary infrastructure to do so" .
