Post by Harvard Medical School

Pairing COVID-19 mRNA vaccines with an adjuvant could make the vaccines more effective and longer-lasting, according to new research led by Harvard Medical School researchers at Boston Children's Hospital. While the majority of FDA-approved vaccines use adjuvants to improve their efficacy, mRNA vaccines typically do not. “Even though the mRNA technology is the biggest breakthrough for vaccine technology in the last two decades, we thought that there was still room for us to improve this platform,” said Ivan Zanoni, senior author and HMS professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s. The findings show that combining a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine with a custom-made adjuvant extended the duration of the vaccine’s protection in mice from a few months up to two years. The combination also showed a more pronounced response against components of the omicron variant of the virus than the vaccine alone, demonstrating that the adjuvant could help the vaccine remain effective even as the virus evolves. https://bit.ly/49ZKzlf