Next-Generation COVID-19 Booster Delivers Strong Immune Response

France-based Sanofi announced today data from two clinical trials conducted with its new next-generation COVID-19 booster vaccine candidate modeled on the Beta variant antigen, including GSK's pandemic adjuvant.

Thomas Triomphe, Executive Vice President, Sanofi Vaccines, stated in a press release issued on June 13, 2022, "COVID-19 keeps evolving, and the combination of the emergence of variants and waning immunity is likely to lead to the need for additional booster shots, at least in some populations."

"The Beta variant expresses similar mutations across multiple variants of concern, including Omicron, making it a strong vaccine candidate to confer broad protection against multiple strains of COVID-19."

"Seeing the cross-neutralization data from the independent AP-HP study, we believe this next-generation booster could have an important role to play in public health vaccination campaigns."

In the Phase 3 VAT02 Cohort 2 study, the Sanofi-GSK next-generation vaccine candidate induced (at day 15 post-immunization) a significant boost in antibody titers above baseline against multiple variants of concern (15-fold increase against D614 parent virus, 30-fold increase against Beta strain) in adults previously primed with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

In particular, against Omicron, preliminary data show a 40-fold increase against BA.1.

The Sanofi-GSK next-generation booster candidate generated double the number of neutralizing antibodies against Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 compared to the D614-based (original parent virus) booster.

In the COVIBOOST study, which included 247 subjects, all three vaccines elicited neutralizing antibodies against the Omicron BA.1 variant, with the highest responses generated by the Sanofi-GSK next-generation candidate.

Results of the COVIBOOST study are available on a pre-print server, pending publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

The totality of data supporting this next-generation booster vaccine will be submitted to regulatory authorities in the upcoming weeks, with the aim of making the vaccine available later in 2022.

In the collaboration between the two companies, Sanofi provides its recombinant antigen, and GSK contributes its pandemic adjuvant, both established vaccine platforms that have proven successful against influenza.