Pfizer and BioNTech Release Positive Early Stage Data on mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Trial

Pfizer Inc. (New York, NY, USA) and Biopharmaceutical New Technologies (BioNTech Mainz, Germany) have released additional Phase 1 safety and immunogenicity data from their ongoing US study of the BNT162 mRNA-based vaccine program against SARS-CoV-2, which has advanced into Phase 2/3 evaluation.

The newly released manuscript describes key safety and immunogenicity data from the U.S. Phase 1 trial for the BNT162b2 vaccine candidate, which at 30ug recorded seven days after the second dose elicited SARS-CoV-2-neutralizing geometric mean titers (GMTs) in younger adults (18-55 years of age) that were 3.8 times the GMT of a panel of 38 sera of SARS-CoV2 convalescent patients, and in older adults (65-85 years of age) the vaccine candidate elicited a neutralizing GMT 1.6 times the GMT of the same panel, demonstrating strong immunogenicity in younger and older adults. Further, across all populations, BNT162b2 administration was well tolerated with mild to moderate fever in fewer than 20% of the participants. These data informed the companies’ decision to advance a 2-dose regimen of the 30µg dose level of BNT162b2, which encodes an optimized SARS-CoV-2 full-length spike glycoprotein (S), into a Phase 2/3 evaluation.

The companies are continuing to analyze data from the Phase 1 trials in the US and Germany. T cell immune responses elicited by BNT162b2 are being evaluated in the German study and the companies expect to submit the data for peer review and potential publication. BNT162b2-vaccinated human participants had displayed a favorable breadth of epitopes recognized in T cell responses specific to the SARS-CoV-2 spike antigen, as compared to the BNT162b1 candidate, and that BNT162b2 demonstrated concurrent induction of high magnitude CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses against the receptor binding domain (RBD) and against the remainder of the spike glycoprotein that is not contained in the BNT162b1 vaccine candidate.

“The totality of the clinical and preclinical data informed Pfizer and BioNTech’s decision to select BNT162b2 as the lead candidate to advance into pivotal trials. We are proud to share our findings with the scientific community as we continue our work to deliver a safe and effective vaccine to combat this devastating virus,” said Kathrin U. Jansen, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Head of Vaccine Research & Development, Pfizer. “We are especially pleased to offer these early data showing our vaccine candidate’s promising safety and immunogenicity profile from the U.S. trial and we look forward to sharing T cell immune response data from the German trial in the near future.”

“It is important to us to continue sharing data and related information on our COVID-19 vaccine lead candidate,” said Ugur Sahin, M.D., CEO and Co-Founder of BioNTech. “The favorable safety profile of BNT162b2 and the breadth of T cell responses we previously announced have supported our decision to select this candidate for the pivotal Phase 2/3 study. As of today, we have already dosed more than 11,000 participants with BNT162b2 in that study.”

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