Valneva is preparing to seek regulatory approval for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine after showing that it elicits better immunity than the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Patients injected with two doses of the product had more antibodies — a proxy for protection against the coronavirus — and fewer side effects than those who got the AstraZeneca vaccine in a study of about 4,000 adults, Valneva said in a statement yesterday.
The two groups had the same number of COVID-19 cases and no patient got severely ill, the company said.
The French drugmaker said that it is preparing to start a submission process with the European Medicines Agency to try to gain approval in the EU.
It has started submitting data to the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
The Valneva vaccine works by taking a sample of the disease that has been killed and using it to stimulate an immune response without creating infection.
“This is a much more traditional approach to vaccine manufacture than the vaccines so far deployed in the UK, Europe and North America, and these results suggest this vaccine candidate is on track to play an important role in overcoming the pandemic,” said Adam Finn, the clinical trial’s lead investigator.
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