What Role Will Novavax’s Vaccine Play in the Global COVID-19 Effort?

In the United States and other leading nations, COVID-19 vaccinations have been steadily increasing, driving infections down to numbers that haven’t been seen since the beginning of the pandemic.

Approved vaccines, like the mRNA platforms of Pfizer and Moderna and the adenovirus platform of Johnson & Johnson, have already mostly filled the need.

However, many poorer nations around the globe have been facing numerous issues with obtaining and administering doses that could significantly improve their situation.

Novavax’s investigative COVID-19 vaccine, NVX-CoV2373, has recently shown extremely promising results from the company’s phase 3 PREVENT-19 trial. The biotechnology company soon plans to file for regulatory authorizations upon completing the final process qualification and assay validation phases.

The vaccine, a protein-based recombinant nanoparticle therapy designed from the genetic sequence of the first SARS-CoV-2 strain, showed an overall vaccine efficacy of 90.4% 7 days post-second dose among participants previously not infected with SARS-CoV-2.

With such an impressive efficacy and safety profile, NVX-CoV2373 could aid in the global fight against COVID-19, especially in areas where they are struggling to get it under control.

Contagion recently sat down with Lisa Dunkle, global medical lead for Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine initiative, to discuss the therapy, the trial and what role it will play in the global fight.