Among the multiple vaccine candidates around the globe, next up in the arsenal against COVID-19 is likely the single-dose Ad26.COV2.S vaccine in development from Johnson & Johnson/Janssen, infectious disease experts predict.
And it got closer this week with promising interim phase 1/2a trial results, published online January 13 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
A single Ad26.COV2.S dose was associated with S-binding and neutralizing antibodies in more than 90% of the participants. The finding was observed in both adults age 18-55 years and participants 65 and older, as well as for participants given low-dose or high-dose vaccinations.
The results also suggest a durable vaccine response. “The take-home message [includes] a high neutralizing antibody responder rate to a single dose of our Ad26.COV2.S COVID-19 vaccine candidate. In addition, we see that these responses and antibody titers are stable for at least 71 days,” senior study author Hanneke Schuitemaker, PhD, global head of viral vaccine discovery and translational medicine at Johnson & Johnson in Leiden, the Netherlands, told Medscape Medical News.
If the single-dose Johnson & Johnson product gains FDA emergency use authorization (EUA), it could significantly boost the number of overall immunizations available. Less stringent storage requirements — only regular refrigeration vs a need to freeze the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines — is another potential advantage.
