U.S. biotech company Novavax said on Wednesday that its COVID-19-influenza vaccine was shown to induce an immune response and was well-tolerated.
“We continue to evaluate the dynamic public health landscape and believe there may be a need for recurrent boosters to fight both COVID-19 and seasonal influenza,” Gregory Glenn, Novavax’s president of research and development, said in a statement.
“We’re encouraged by these data and the potential path forward for a combination COVID-19-influenza vaccine as well as stand-alone vaccines for influenza and COVID-19,” said Glenn.
According to the company, its combined vaccine was shown to be “generally well tolerated” and serious adverse effects were “rare.”
The company’s clinical trial looked into different formulations of the potential COVID-19-influenza vaccine, which Novavax said involved “powerful fine-tuning” of the different doses of its COVID-19 and influenza vaccines.
Different formulations of the combined vaccine induced immune responses that were “comparable” to stand-alone COVID-19 and flu shots, Novavax said.
“Modeling results also showed that a combined formulation has the potential to reduce total antigen amount by up to 50% overall, optimizing production and delivery,” said the company.
Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine is currently authorized for administration in more than 30 countries, but has not been granted authorization in the U.S. The company submitted a request for emergency use authorization to the Food and Drug Administration in January, but a decision is still pending.
Unlike the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, the two most widely administered COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S., Novavax’s vaccine is not mRNA-based and is a more traditional protein subunit vaccine that contains an inactivated portion of the virus.
