Johnson and Johnson’s single shot vaccine elicited more antibodies against the Delta variant, the most dominant form of the coronavirus in India, than against the Beta variant, first isolated in South Africa.
“We believe that our vaccine offers durable protection against COVID-19 and elicits neutralising activity against the Delta variant. This adds to the robust body of clinical data supporting our single-shot vaccine’s ability to protect against multiple variants of concern,” Paul Stoffels, M.D., Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Scientific Officer at Johnson & Johnson, said in a statement on Friday.
Pre-print publication
These results were part of a pre-print, or not peer-reviewed, publication and based on an analysis of a group of eight vaccinated volunteers. Antibody levels alone aren’t an indicator of a vaccine’s ability to elicit protection against infection. They are part of the company’s larger 44,000 volunteer-strong phase 3 trial that has so far reported an efficacy of 85% against severe disease.
On Friday, Dr. V.K. Paul, Chairman of the National Empowered Group on Vaccination, said the Hyderabad-based Biological E would likely be producing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
In another pre-print, a study based on the vaccine, on 20 volunteers showed that humoral and cellular immune responses generated by the Johnson & Johnson single-shot vaccine lasted at least eight months.
‘Durable cellular immune response’
“Current data for the eight months studied so far show that the single-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine generates a strong neutralising antibody response that does not wane; rather, we observe an improvement over time. In addition, we observe a persistent and particularly robust, durable cellular immune response,” said Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., Global Head, Janssen Research & Development, Johnson & Johnson.
“With each new dataset, we build on our solid foundation of evidence that our single-shot COVID-19 vaccine plays a critical role in ending the pandemic, which continues to evolve and pose new challenges to global health,” he stated.
A single dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine generated neutralising antibodies against a range of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, which increased over time, including against the increasingly prevalent and more transmissible Delta (B.1.617.2) variant, the partially neutralisation-resistant Beta (B.1.351), the Gamma (P.1) variants and others, including the Alpha (B.1.1.7), Epsilon (B.1.429), Kappa (B.1.617.1) and D614G variants, as well as the original SARS-CoV-2 strain (WA1/2020), the company statement noted.