To ensure the coronavirus vaccine rollout in the UK does not prove a logistical nightmare, policymakers have considered mixing and matching vaccines to smoothen the process. While this makes sense logistically, it may also serve a scientific purpose. As immunologist Professor Danny Altmann explained on ITV’s This Morning, it has been suggested that mix and matching can enhance immunity.
Early in February, researchers in the UK launched a study that will mix and match two COVID-19 vaccines in a bid to iron out logistics of immunising millions of people.
The study will also determine whether combining vaccines will boost immune responses in the process.
As an article in the journal Nature reports, the clinical trial is testing participants’ immune responses to receiving one shot of a coronavirus vaccine produced by Oxford and drug firm AstraZeneca — which uses a harmless virus to carry a key coronavirus gene into cells — and one shot of the vaccine produced by drug company Pfizer, which uses RNA instructions to trigger an immune response.
As the journal article points out, the ability to mix and match vaccines could make vaccination programmes more flexible: it would speed up the process and reduce the impact of any supply-chain disruptions.
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“It really makes the implementation much more simple,” said Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at Public Health England, at a press briefing on 3 February.
Oxford has said that it will also trial combinations of its COVID-19 vaccine with the Russian coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, which uses harmless viruses to shuttle components of the coronavirus into cells.
According to the journal article, some researchers also think that combining two vaccines could strengthen immune responses by harnessing the best features of each.
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That would be particularly desirable now that vaccine developers are combating coronavirus variants that seem to be partially resistant to certain immune responses, said Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
“It’s possible that responses might be better than what either vaccine can achieve on its own,” he said.
“But that remains to be proven experimentally for COVID-19.”
The trial will not look directly at how well the combination protects against COVID-19 — such a study would need to be much larger and would take a long time to complete, states the Nature article.
Instead, the team will take regular blood samples to measure levels of antibodies and immune cells called T cells that participants produce against the coronavirus. It will also monitor for safety concerns.
Animal studies suggest that a strengthened immune response is possible.
In a preprint published on bioRxiv on 29 January, researchers reported that a combination of an RNA coronavirus vaccine and the AstraZeneca vaccine roused CD8+ T cells in mice better than either vaccine alone.
CD8+ T cells are a critical component of the immune system that reacts to pathogens.
In the UK, a total of 31,622,367 people (60 percent of adults) have now had a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, while 5,496,716 (10.4 percent) have had both shots.
Source: Daily Express
