Moderna quote: Moderna scientists and executive
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Moderna scientists and executives laid out their plans to combat new strains of the virus that causes Covid-19 at a virtual investor event on Thursday, saying that new waves of the epidemic are on their way.
“As the virus spreads, it is rapidly mutating,” the company’s chief scientific officer, Melissa Moore, said on the call. “Some of these new viral strains appear to be even more transmissible than the original strain… We already know that some of these new strains are less susceptible to neutralization by our current vaccine.”
The company said that it tests new variants in the lab against its vaccines, and is “constantly” making and testing new versions of its vaccine. But it warned that the process is not instantaneous, and that the company’s agility is limited by the complexity of the work.
“The shortest time from the detection of a variant of concern to preclinical immunogenicity readout against a panel of pseudoviruses is approximately 2 to 3 months,” said Guillaume Stewat-Jones, a Moderna (ticker: MRNA) scientist who works as associate director of antigen design and selection on their infectious disease team. “And new viral variants are coming — emerging constantly in real time.”