Word came yesterday that Novavax had very good safety and efficacy in the trial of their recombinant protein vaccine. This is good news. By this point, the vaccine is much less needed here in the US, but it could be a very important part of getting many other countries vaccinated, due to its less demanding storage requirements and (relatively) straightforward production process. The company does intend to file for FDA approval, and is in the last stages of getting all of its manufacturing and quality control procedures ready for that. I hope that this opens up to worldwide usage of this one, and that the company really is ready for large-scale production.
As many readers are well aware, this is a recombinant protein vaccine, not a viral vector (like J&J or the Oxford/AZ vaccines), and not an mRNA one like Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech. I also hope that this allays some of the worries that many people still have about those two platforms: recombinant protein vaccines have been around for longer, so this one would (presumably) be less of a concern for some potential users.
It's a long article but well-worth reading as it explores, debunks, and explains many questions that have been posed concerning the spike protein in the virus SARS-CoV-2 which causes in COVID-19.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Tuesday June 15 2021, @06:24PM
OK, for everyone who thought "citation needed" and was too polite to say so, here's one paper on the subject. I don't think it's the same one I remember reading.
https://www.meta.org/papers/sars-cov-2-mrna-vaccines-foster-potent-antigen-spe/33296685 [meta.org]
Worth remembering that changing the adjuvant could plausibly change the results.
/me goes off to Google some more ...
Cool! The Novavax vaccine does induce a T follicular helper cell response:
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200702/Novavax-SARS-CoV-2-vaccine-candidate-shows-promise-in-animal-models.aspx [news-medical.net]