Thread by @profshanecrotty

1/ Novavax UK first:
~90% protection again any symptomatic COVID-19. And that high level of protection was accomplished under conditions of very intense community transmission in the UK, which is a high bar. 1/n
bit.ly/3oEpann

2/ (i.e., most likely a higher bar for protection than USA summer transmission, or anywhere with low level SARS2 transmission). And that was under conditions of high prevalence of the "UK variant" (B117), which is significantly more transmissible than the parental SARS2 strain.

3/ The Novavax vaccine was quite protective against both the parental strain and the UK variant, which is welcome news.

4/ The Novavax UK Phase 3 trial does not have sufficient cases of severe disease to make statements about that, but given their data and all that we know from the other vaccine trials, the Novavax vaccine is likely to show even more protection against severe or fatal COVID-19,

5/ presumably being almost 100% effective against severe or fatal COVID-19 with the parental strain or the UK variant. All of that is very impressive, and welcome news.
ir.novavax.com/static-files/1…

6/ It was also excellent that the Novavax UK trial had 27% participants over the age of 65.

7/ The Novavax vaccine is a protein vaccine, so it is different from the RNA vaccine and viral vector approaches. It is great to have three different vaccine modalities show success.
nytimes.com/interactive/20…

8/ It adds to the total vaccine doses that will be available worldwide, and it is a valuable to have diverse pathways to success to hedge against any future challenges that may emerge for any single vaccine. Tough to overstate how important that is globally.

9/ I, and others, predicted vaccine efficacy against the UK variant would be similar to that against the 'original' SARS2, particularly after the recent wave of pre-prints on antibodies recognizing B117. But, expectations are just expectations...

10/ The Novavax UK trial proved that a strong immune response to original SARS2 Spike is also protective against the UK variant, which is fantastic to see!

11/ There may be a quantifiable difference in the protection, but so far it appears to be statistically insignificant, and biologically it is a minor point compared to the bottom line results of ~90% efficacy at preventing COVID-19.

12/ The Novavax vaccine also uses a newer adjuvant, Matrix-M1, which is an ISCOMs-type adjuvant. It is great to see another adjuvant class prove efficacious and safe in humans.

13/ We have used ISCOMs adjuvants in a number of pre-clinical vaccine studies in our HIV vaccine consortium CHAVD (such as the paper below), and I have been impressed by ISCOMs adjuvants.

14/ Safety: It will be good to see the detailed safety data, but the initial report for the Phase 3 UK trial looks very good, and consistent with earlier good vaccine safety data.

15/ Bottom line, the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine is another big win for humanity in the battle against COVID-19!