Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine shows hope against Delta variants in laboratory study Reuters

(Reuters)-The drugmaker said on Tuesday that Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine showed resistance to the Delta variant that was first discovered in India in a laboratory study, and its response was slightly reduced compared to the original strain .

The study was conducted on sera obtained from eight participants one week after receiving the second dose of vaccine mRNA-1273.

The vaccine elicited an antibody response against all tested variants, according to Modern (NASDAQ:), but in all cases, the vaccine’s neutralizing activity against the original coronavirus strain first discovered in China is still poor.

The data shows that the vaccine is more effective in generating antibodies against the Delta variant than against the Beta variant first discovered in South Africa.

For the three versions of Beta variants, compared with the antibodies produced against the original strain, the vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies are reduced by 6 to 8 times, and the lineages of variants discovered for the first time in India include Delta and Kappa.

“These new data are encouraging and strengthen our belief that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine should maintain protection against newly detected variants,” said CEO Stéphane Bancel.

Earlier in the day, India approved the drug maker Cipla Ltd to import Moderna’s vaccine into the country to restrict its use.

The drugmaker’s stock price rose 5.5% to $235.39 in midday trading.

Moderna has submitted the data as a preprint to the website bioRxiv before peer review. (https://