Novavax Covid vaccine data impresses FDA committee experts, and outshines Moderna and Pfizer at the all-day FDA meeting to strategize the fall booster campaign
At the all-day meeting Tuesday of the FDA's expert committee on vaccines, Novavax was 1 of just 3 vaccine companies invited to participate. This participation included extensive presentations by each company. Novavax was given as much time as Moderna and Pfizer were.
Here is a link to the full Novavax presentation live-streamed on YouTube. This link is cued up to the exact start of the presentation:
https://youtu.be/BFdzNUus_CE?t=11446In it, Novavax presented strong evidence that its current vaccine produces excellent cross-protection against all variants, including the new BA.5 variant that is taking over the US. Some experts said the Novavax vaccine data was the most impressive data of the three companies, while zero experts said the Moderna or Pfizer data was the most impressive.The data from Moderna and Pfizer was much weaker in comparison and showed that RNA vaccines have a very tough time protecting against new variants.
For example, Pfizer's BA.1 vaccine had dramatically lower immune responses against BA.5 than Pfizer's BA.4/5 vaccine had. So even though BA.5 is only a few months removed from BA.1, Pfizer's BA.1 vaccine already has trouble with it. Moderna's BA.1 vaccine also had major trouble with BA.5.It has become apparent that unless an RNA vaccine is matched almost exactly with the currently dominant variant, it usually doesn't offer good protection. The big problem with this is that usually a new variant becomes dominant every 3 to 5 months.The lag time between when a new variant is becoming dominant and when the RNA companies can master the manufacturing process, receive FDA approval, and roll the vaccine out is about 4 to 4 1/2 months.
This was covered in detail during the FDA meeting. For example, the BA.4/5 variants became dominant in South Africa in April, had spread in numerous countries in Europe and North America by early May and took over in much of the world by early June. They had become the primary variants in the US by late June.
At the meeting Tuesday, Moderna said if they were told on June 28 that they needed to do a BA.5 vaccine (or BA.4/5 vaccine), it would take them 3 months to figure out the commercial scale manufacturing process and get it working fine. Then they'd submit the manufacturing data and other data to the FDA. After that, assuming a quick review and approval process, they'd be able to start rolling it out somewhere between the end of October and mid-November.That's 4 to 4 1/2 months.
Because BA.5 had become dominant in so many places in early June, Pfizer said it had already done a good amount of work on BA.5 manufacturing. Even with that, it said it would not be able to start delivering the vaccine until October, and FDA review and approval mean it could be mid-to-late October before it's rolled out. Start to finish, that's about 4 1/2 months. Put that 4 to 4 1/2 months timeline alongside new variants taking over every 3 to 5 months and it means:
By the time the new vaccine rolls out, a new variant usually will have already taken over, or will take over within another month.
Most people won't even have gotten the booster in the first 4 weeks it's rolled out.To add to the problem further, it takes about one month for a person to reach peak antibodies after a booster dose. So even if a person gets an RNA booster dose in week 2 of the roll-out, by the time the immune response has heavily kicked in, most of the time a new variant will already be dominant. And the RNA vaccine won't be matched to it and will have subpar protection.
By contrast, even though BA.5 is about two years removed from the Wuhan strain, the Novavax vaccine for Wuhan has very strong immune responses against BA.5. In a nutshell, the Novavax Wuhan vaccine is stronger against BA.5 than the Pfizer BA.1 vaccine is or the Moderna BA.1 vaccine. That's a very impressive feat.
The Novavax vaccine also has strong immune responses for BA.1, BA.2 and other prior variants. During the Novavax presentation, Dr. Gregory Glenn said the data indicates the Novavax vaccine is "universal-like." Furthermore, trials proved that it had very high efficacy against the Wuhan, Alpha and Delta strains and a few of the shorter-lived variants like Iota.A few prominent experts on the committee said they were very impressed by the Novavax vaccine and evidence. Two of them flat-out said the Novavax data was stronger than the RNA data. Here is a quote during the meeting from committee member Dr. James Hildreth, who is an expert in immunology and also president of Meharry Medical College in Nashville:
“The most compelling thing that I’ve seen today is the data from Novavax, showing that their protein vaccine can elicit neutralizing antibodies to the prototype strain, to BA.1, BA.2, and BA.5.
Their data seems more impressive to me than the data presented by either Pfizer or Moderna. I just wonder whether or not it might be timely for the agency to quickly review the data and make a decision to approve the Novavax vaccine.
… and there are tens of millions of people who have not been vaccinated, many of whom would accept a protein vaccine who would not otherwise accept an RNA vaccine.
So to me, I think that it’s very compelling that we move forward on the Novavax vaccine for all of those reasons.
And again I want to say the most impressive data that I saw today was presented by Dr. Glenn from Novavax.
These comments weren't made just after the morning Novavax presentation, but rather near the end of the day during the period to discuss overall FDA strategy. Here is the point in the video where he begins speaking, and a half-minute in the quotes above start:
During the same discussion, Dr. Wayne Marasco, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and founder of the National Foundation of Cancer Research (NFCR) Center for Therapeutic Antibody Engineering (CTAE), also praised the Novavax vaccine. Marasco is one of the top people in the country on infectious diseases. In addition to the things above, he founded and runs an important research and development lab in the Department of Cancer Immunology and Virology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The Marasco Lab focuses on areas such as targeted immunotherapy and the treatment of emerging infectious diseases including SARS, highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza (bird flu), West Nile Virus (encephalitis) and Denge virus, as well as HIV/AIDS and cancer. His lab has made important breakthroughs that you can read a summary of here:
https://hsci.harvard.edu/people/wayne-marasco-md-phd
He is also professor of Cancer, Immunology, and Virology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and supervises fellows and residents in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dana-Farber is the 37th largest nonprofit in the US and receives funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Its annual budget of about $2 billion allows it to hire some of the best people from around the world, including Dr. Marasco. This is what he said at the meeting:
"So, I don’t know if the rest of the committee is as impressed by this data as I was, but the Novavax data was pretty significant in that the ancestral strain in their formulation was able to give pretty good protection against Omicron 5 (BA.5) and they also showed in their cartography work that the antigenic distance had been lessened with that booster. So that essentially means that the antigen itself, presented properly in an adjuvanted protein form, is able to produce antibodies that have that broader capability.
And I am wondering after seeing this data, if we are not witnessing some of the limitation that there may be with the mRNA vaccines. Yes, they were first out of the gate, but they don’t appear to be able to have that kind of, um, breadth of protection.
View the video of the quote above here:
Dr. Marasco was so impressed by the Novavax vaccine that he brought it up again at the end of the day. Here's part of what he said. Note that the only data presented during the day that wasn't RNA was Novavax, so that's what he is talking about here:
"But I will say that I was pretty interested today that we can do better, and I am not sure that the mRNA vaccines as they have presented so far, are giving us the best kind of immunity that we can get here. So I think this is a step in the right direction, but we have to reevaluate this as we move forward, because I think there’s something to be said about a trans-presentation versus a cis, and I mean that antibodies elicited to be able to bridge more than one variant ....
The video clip of the quote above is here:
Also during the meeting, committee member
Hayley Altman-Gans, an expert in infectious disease and professor at Stanford University Medical Center, said: "I would agree that the data presented from our colleagues at Novavax was very impressive …" She also talked about the benefit of having people who have received RNA doses get the Novavax vaccine.
At the end of the day in the final comments, she said she felt compelled to again talk about having RNA recipients get the Novavax vaccine in order to broaden their protection:
"Hopefully as sort of the process moves forward and maybe we have a third vaccine option, well actually a fourth at this point, vaccine option for us with Novavax, that we really ought to consider mix and-match as we have in the past. I brought that up earlier, but I thought I should bring it up again because it really does broaden our ability to get to these Omicron and the BA4/BA5, which are starting to take over faster, then that might be an option to bridge us."
Here is a link to video of the quote above::
Other experts spoke positively about the Novavax vaccine and data during the meeting. To see the information, we recommend watching Novavax's presentation to the expert committee and the positive discussion that follows. Here is a link to a copy of the YouTube live stream of the meeting cued up to the exact start of the Novavax presentation:
https://youtu.be/BFdzNUus_CE?t=11446Please note that only some of the discussion and comments about Novavax came just after the presentation., which was in the morning. A lot of it came later in the day. The livestream above has the whole meeting.If you are a Novavax investor or thinking of becoming one, or are simply interested in vaccines or what's going on in the fight against Covid, the presentation is very worth seeing.Also, if you are ever going to forward a Novavax newsletter to friends, family or colleagues, today's newsletter is probably the one you should because the information above is seminal for both the company and the fight against Covid. The side effects data in the next story below is also important for the company and the general public, who prefer lower side effects.To receive a daily Novavax news and information newsletter for free that contains updates similar to the one above, sign up here: novavaxinformation.com. This website and newsletter are not owned by or affiliated with Novavax Inc. in any way.