Adjuvanted Novavax Booster Adapts to New Variants

https://www.contagionlive.com/view/adjuvanted-novavax-booster-adapts-to-new-variants

The Novavax booster, NVX-CoV2373, was previously authorized in other geographies, including in the European Union. In the US, it will be the third COVID-19 booster dose, along with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, available after a primary vaccine series.

At the IDWeek conference, we sat down with Novavax executive director, Clinical Development, Germán Áñez, MD, to learn more about this new non-mRNA booster vaccine.

At 1 month after receiving the Novavax booster vaccination, Añéz said, trial participants had both neutralizing antibody titers and binding IgG titers that were approximately 3 times higher than after primary vaccination. This fulfilled the noninferiority criteria.

Añéz said these results were largely expected, but a surprising result was how well the booster performed against Omicron subvariants. “We tested samples against 3 different flavors of the Omicron variant, BA.1, BA.2, and BA.5,” he said, emphasizing they found high titers even though the booster vaccine does not contain an Omicron sequence.