Developing variant-adapted COVID-19 vaccines to improve protection against Omicron and other recent variants: a plain language summary

Summary

What are variant-adapted COVID-19 vaccines?

The COVID-19 vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer is known as BNT162b2 (Comirnaty). BNT162b2 contains messenger RNA, or mRNA, from SARS-CoV-2. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus responsible for COVID-19. mRNA is a type of genetic material that contains the instructions that tell cells in the body how to make a protein. The mRNA in BNT162b2 tells the body to make one of the proteins from SARS-CoV-2 known as the spike protein.

This teaches the body’s defense system, known as the immune system, to recognize and respond to a SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The BNT162b2 vaccine contains mRNA from the first SARS-CoV-2 virus, which was detected in December 2019. Since this original vaccine was developed, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has evolved, resulting in the appearance of new versions of the virus, known as variants. Certain variants that might be more concerning for public health are labeled as either ‘variants of concern’ or ‘variants of interest’ by the World Health Organization (WHO). Variants have differences in their proteins compared with the original virus that can affect how well the original vaccine works against them. Therefore, BioNTech and Pfizer developed updated versions of the BNT162b2 vaccine that contain mRNA from certain variants. These new vaccines are called variant-adapted COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

Another company, Moderna, has also developed their own variant-adapted versions of their COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, mRNA-1273 (SpikeVax).

Variant-adapted vaccines can contain parts of the variant mRNA either in addition to, or instead of, that from the original virus. Vaccines that contain mRNA from two different viruses are known as bivalent, whereas vaccines that contain mRNA from a single virus are called monovalent.

Keywords:

• Plain language summary
• Vaccines
• COVID-19
• SARS-CoV-2
• BNT162b2
• Variant of concern
• Omicron
• Bivalent vaccines

Funding disclosure

This manuscript was funded by BioNTech SE.

Declaration of interest

A Muik, S Pather, F Mensa, and R Rizzi are employees of BioNTech SE (Mainz, Germany). A Muik is an inventor on patents and patent applications related to RNA technology and COVID-19 vaccines. A Muik, S Pather, F Mensa, and R Rizzi have securities from BioNTech SE. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in, or financial conflict with, the subject matter or material discussed in the manuscript, apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

All authors substantially contributed to the article conception, writing, and review process, and approved the final version for submission.

Acknowledgments

Medical writing and editorial support were provided by Rachel Wright, PhD, of Scion, London, UK, funded by BioNTech SE.

Additional information

Funding

This manuscript was funded by BioNTech SE.