New Delhi: The newest Covid-19 vaccine did not show increased coverage against the JN. 1 variant, which is still circulating, according to a study.
JN. 1, of the Omicron lineage, is from BA. 2. 86.
The variant, first detected in Luxembourg in August, has been classified as a variant of interest (VOI) by the World Health Organization (WHO) due to its spread.
The additional L455S mutation in the spike protein of JN. 1 is thought to have conferred immune-evading properties to the variant.
The study, published in a preprint and not yet peer-reviewed, tested the efficacy of XBB 1. 5 boosters on the JN. 1 variant in 76 people. The effects showed that the vaccine provided greater overall coverage, but that the globally dominant JN. 1 controlled to evade it.
“Surprisingly, while many individual mutations that appeared between 2020 and 2022 show serum leakage after the first vaccination, few of them escape the boosted sera,” Alejandro B. Balazs, of the Ragon Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in the article. .
“An updated XBB. 1. 5 booster, particularly higher titers opposed to newer variants, but not opposed to JN. 1,” he added.
Crucially, the team also found that new emerging Covid variants have “more effective tactics for entering cells,” in addition to the usual hotspot: ACE2.
“In addition to escaping vaccine sera, we found that mutations also particularly contribute to the pseudovirus’s ability to infect cells, suggesting that the variant strain optimizes antibody leakage and virus entry. We found that variant spikes after BA. 1 produced pseudoviruses. “They were up to 30 times more effective at transducing target cells than the wild-type type, suggesting that the WT spike of SARS-CoV-2 is not optimally configured for ACE2-dependent viral entry,” the team said.
While seasonal boosters increase immunity against new strains, the prospect of immune evasion of “variants demonstrates the need for new approaches to adequately control SARS-CoV-2 transmission,” the team said.
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