The Valneva vaccine, rejected by the United Kingdom, must “reinvent itself as a booster vaccine”, according to immunol – franceinfo

The vaccine candidate of the Franco-Austrian group Valneva must “reinventing a different strategy and positioning itself rather as a booster vaccine [stimulant]”, said Monday, September 19 on franceinfo Stéphane Paul, immunologist, member of the anti-Covid vaccines committee, while the Nantes-based laboratory received a notice of termination from the British government concerning “supply agreement” of its candidate vaccine against Covid-19.

Valneva’s vaccine is of a “fairly old technology”, explains Stéphane Paul. “It’s actually the virus itself that’s chemically inactivated. So it’s a very classic vaccine, like diphtheria, tetanus, and old vaccines.” This vaccine is “quite similar to the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine. And we know that these vaccines are less effective, especially against the delta variant.” For the immunologist, therefore, Valneva must be “at least as effective” as messenger RNA vaccines, “very effective over 90%”, to have a place.

But Stéphane Paul believes that the candidate Valvena “presents a technology which is interesting, in particular on the boost effect that annual seasonal boosters can have, possibly with the flu”. “The beauty of inactivated virus approaches is that it covers a lot of different antigens, a fairly rich source of different regions of the virus that are going to be recognized, which is quite different from the RNA vaccine.” The immunologist imagines that reminders “with inactivated vaccines, would have a somewhat more reliable boost effect vis-à-vis variants that could emerge”. Valneva must therefore “reinventing a different strategy and positioning itself a little differently, that is to say not as a first-line vaccine, but rather as a booster vaccine”, adds Stéphane Paul. “And there, indeed, there is room”.