Bavarian Nordic abandons Covid booster after data show it’s not as effective against new variants

Bavar­i­an Nordic is aban­don­ing its Covid-19 boost­er vac­cine af­ter Phase III re­sults — even though it did hit the pri­ma­ry end­point of the study — be­cause it’s not as ef­fec­tive against new­er vari­ants of the virus.

The cap­sid virus-like par­ti­cle (cVLP) based boost­er, called AB­N­CoV2, did low­er the lev­els of neu­tral­iz­ing an­ti­bod­ies against the orig­i­nal SARS-CoV-2 vari­ant. But even if the da­ta found that it was non-in­fe­ri­or to the par­tic­i­pants in the study who were vac­ci­nat­ed with Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech’s Comir­naty, it was for a vari­ant that is “no longer the pri­ma­ry con­cern,” Bavar­i­an said.

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