Global pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca, said they expect their COVID-19 vaccine to be effective in preventing the strain of corona discovered in the UK.
Ugur Sahin, CEO of Bioentech, Germany, who jointly developed the vaccine with Pfizer in the United States, said that the company's vaccine using mRNA, the messenger ribonucleic acid, will be able to deal with the corona strain. It said that research and information collection will be conducted.
"The vaccine they developed contains more than 1,270 amino acids, and only 9 of them have changed in the variant corona," said Sahin. "It means 99% of the protein is still the same."
"The advantage of the latest vaccine technology, mRNA technology, is that we can start manufacturing a vaccine that fully mimics the new mutation," said Sahin.
British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said, "Our vaccine candidates contain the genetic material of the protein spikes raised by the coronavirus. It seems that the change in the genetic code found in this variant did not change the structure of the protein spike." It.
Reuters reported that Modena, a US pharmaceutical company that developed the Corona 19 vaccine, and Curebag, a German pharmaceutical company, also believed that it would be effective against the variant coronavirus that spread in the UK.
Cureback, which started phase 3 clinical trials last week, said it continues to observe viral mutations, and says mutations are common when the virus spreads.
The mRNA technology was also applied to the vaccine developed by Modena and Curevac, and AstraZeneca's vaccine was developed on a more traditional basis using adenovirus, a weak cold virus.