BioPharma

Moderna, Roche team up to track duration of Covid-19 protection after vaccination

Moderna is using a Roche antibody test in clinical trials of its Covid-19 vaccine. The test can measure the antibodies created through vaccination, offering a window into how long protection lasts.

As healthcare workers roll up their sleeves for Covid-19 shots, some may be wondering how long they will be protected from the virus.

It is a critical question, since two Covid-19 vaccines were cleared in December for emergency use after months of study rather than the years it has traditionally taken vaccines to reach the market.

Moderna, one of the vaccine makers, is collecting answers through a partnership with Roche. Based in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is providing an antibody test that will help trace the impact of the Moderna vaccine on clinical trial participants.

The partnership comes on the heels of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granting emergency use authorization for the test, called the Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 S.

Many tests, including another version of the Elecsys test, are qualitative: They detect whether or not a person has antibodies. The Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 S quantifies the level of antibodies directed specifically against the signature spike protein of Covid-19.

As such, the test can be used to detect whether people are losing protection from the vaccine and may need to be revaccinated, according to Roche. Researchers also could detect any differences in the duration of immunity between population groups.

“Antibody tests like these will play a critical role in measuring a person’s vaccine-induced immune response,” Thomas Schinecker, CEO of Roche Diagnostics, said in a statement when emergency use was granted in early December.

The first two vaccines approved for use in the U.S. are based on a technology called messenger RNA, which induces the body to create antibodies designed to fight off the virus’s spike protein. It does not introduce the actual virus. One vaccine is from Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The other is from New York-based Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech.

The vaccines were OKed for emergency use in December based on about two months of data on their safety and efficacy. Developers are continuing their trials to gauge the vaccine’s longer-term effects.

It is not clear how long immunity lasts after a person contracts Covid-19 naturally, but a study of health care workers in England showed that immunity lasted for at least six months. There were a few cases of reinfection but they were asymptomatic.

Pfizer spokesperson Steven Danehy declined to address how the company is assessing the longevity of protection for its vaccine. But he noted the question is being explored

“Because the first known cases of Covid-19 only occurred in December 2019, there hasn’t been enough time to observe a significant number of second illnesses to know the duration of natural protection,” Danehy wrote in an emailed statement. “Similarly, determining the duration of immunity after immunization will require observing a large number of people who have been immunized with an effective vaccine to see if or when their rates of Covid-19 will start to increase relative to the time of immunization.”

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