Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX) recently announced its vaccine candidate targeting both COVID-19 and the seasonal flu virus triggered an immune response similar to the company's separate shots for each virus.
The results, published Wednesday, came from a Phase 1/2 trial of 642 adults between the ages of 50- and 70-years-old conducted in Australia. All of the participants had first been vaccination by an initial COVID vaccination series.
Novavax Chief Medical Officer Filip Dubovsky told reporters that the trial found that a combined dose of up 25 micrograms of its COVID vaccine candidate (NVX-CoV2373) and up to 35 micrograms of its flu vaccine triggered strong immune responses and was well tolerated by study participants.
"What we demonstrated in this study is we were able to get the immune responses really comparable to what the individual vaccine did prior to combination," Dubovsky said, quoted by CNBC.
The company plans to launch a late stage trial on the full efficiency of this combination vaccine candidate during the 2023 flu season at the earliest, when the flu virus should be circulating at its highest. However, flu cases have declined dramatically since the start of the global COVID pandemic.
Novavax previously reported last year that its flu vaccine had higher immunogenicity than Sanofis' Fluzone Quadrivalent (the leading U.S.-licenced quadrivalent vaccine) against both homologous and heterologous viral strains. The company's COVID vaccine was also found to be 90% effective in a Phase 3 clinical trial, but that vaccine was designed to protect against the original SARS-CoV-2 strain and the study took place before Omicron became the global dominant strain.
The company's COVID vaccine uses a different technology than the popular mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer (NYSE: PFE)-BioNTech (NASDAQ: BNTX) and Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA). Instead of using messenger RNA to train the immune system to create virus neutralizing antibodies that prevent the COVID virus's spike proteins from attaching to human cells, Novavax has synthesized the genetic code of the virus's spike protein which enters the body with the help of a carrier virus to produce an immune response.
Novavax was an early front runner in the race to create an effective COVID vaccine back in 2020. The company was a participant in the former Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed, but has failed to get its candidate authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dubovsky told reporters that the FDA is still reviewing its application, CNBC reports.
By combining both a COVID and flu vaccine, Novavax hopes to target both deadly viruses with one vaccine given ahead of their peak seasons during the winter months.