Inactivated vaccines may be more effective against fighting new mutated strains of the coronavirus, according to a top immunologist.To get more news about sinopharm covid vaccine, you can visit shine news official website.
Such vaccines, including the UAE-approved Sinopharm, use a “dead” version of the whole virus, offering protection against multiple areas.That means they may hold up better against variants.
Luke O’Neill, professor of biochemistry in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, said because inactivated vaccines are based on the whole virus, the immune system will have “lots of weapons against lots of parts of the vaccine”.Most of them, including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Russia’s Sputnik V, target the spike protein on the surface of the coronavirus, which the virus uses to enter cells.
Covid-19 variants which have emerged in recent months in the UK, South Africa and Brazil include a number of mutations in the spike, which experts said may render the vaccines less effective.“The other vaccines are just against the spike protein so if that mutates and escapes the immune system, the vaccines may not work as well,” Prof O’Neill told The National
“The whole virus vaccines are very likely to work against any variant.”He said it was not yet clear how much the spike vaccines will be affected by variants.“And there are signs that the Pfizer vaccine might still generate antibodies against the UK variant, at least,” he said.“Also there might still be a good T cell response with the Pfizer and other vaccines.”
Sinopharm and other inactivated vaccines are also expected to generate a T-cell response, he said.At the weekend, White House health advisor Dr Anthony Fauci warned the Pfizer and other spike protein vaccines may not be as effective in guarding against new variants.
That is a concern as two that have emerged in the UK and South Africa are believed to be more transmissible and could even have higher mortality rates.Early research, which has yet to be peer reviewed, backed Dr Fauci’s claim.
