The Novavax vaccine uses a distinct technology from other already-authorized COVID-19 vaccines. It harnesses insect cells to churn out full-length copies of the spike protein that studs the surface of SARS-COV-2 and enables it to invade host cells. It is the first protein-based COVID-19 vaccine to report out results from a pivotal clinical trial. Like the COVID-19 vaccines authorized so far, it requires two doses. Another company, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, is expected to announce results for a one-dose COVID-19 vaccine tomorrow. Overall, vaccine experts praised the results of both Novavax trials. Novavax has effected “a remarkable accomplishment. We need as many successful vaccines as possible,” says Luciana Borio, a vaccine expert who is a vice president at In-Q-Tel, a technology investment firm that invests in biosecurity and other national security technologies. Andrew Ward, a structural biologist at Scripps Research who co-authored the foundational paper describing the structure of Novavax’s vaccine, noted that compared with some other vaccines, “the cold chain requirements are much less stringent” for this vaccine, which only requires refrigeration at 2°C to 8°C. “This is also great news for global vaccine efforts, particularly in third world and remote settings.”

Novavax this month initiated an application for regulatory approval of its vaccine, called NVX-CoV2373, in the United Kingdom. It has said that, including production at the Serum Institute of India, it can make 2 billion doses of vaccine this year. U.S. approval will depend on the results of a recently launched 30,000-person trial in the United States and Mexico. That trial has accrued more than 16,000 participants in its first 30 days.

Although the efficacy in South Africa was far lower than the 95% seen with widely authorized messenger RNA vaccines from Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech collaboration, South African scientists found some good news, because the Novavax vaccine still has a degree of efficacy against the variant. “While there definitely is an impact [on how much protection it confers], it’s perhaps not as bad as we all thought it might be,” says Lynn Morris, who heads South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases. For the South African trial’s interim analysis, in which 44 infections were recorded from September 2020 through mid-January, 15 infections occurred among vaccinated participants and 29 infections among placebo recipients. Of the viruses sequenced, 25 of 27, or 92.6%, showed infection with the new B.1.351 variant.

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