Could CanSino’s inhaled coronavirus vaccine booster be a quick, needle-free option?

Name: China considers mixing Covid-19 vaccine types to boost effectiveness
Uploaded: 2022-01-12T09:02:45.000Z
Duration: 2 min 1 s
Description: China considers mixing Covid-19 vaccine types to boost effectiveness

Study finds Chinese vaccine induces a higher level of immune response than a Sinovac booster for those vaccinated with two Sinovac shots

Inhaled vaccines imitate natural Covid-19 infection, targeting the nose, throat and lungs entry points for a localised immune response

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CanSino Biologics’ inhaled vaccine must go through clinical trials for approval. A late-stage human trial involving 13,000 participants was registered on Clinicaltrials.gov last month. Photo: Reuters

Holly Chik

Published: 5:02pm, 12 Jan 2022Updated: 7:43pm, 12 Jan 2022

CanSino’s inhaled Covid-19 vaccine booster induces a higher level of immune response for those vaccinated with two Sinovac shots than a third dose of the Sinovac vaccine, a team of Chinese researchers has found.

Study participants who received the CanSino booster showed “much stronger neutralising antibody responses” – at nearly seven to 11 times higher than that of a three-dose regimen of the Sinovac shot – according to the study of 420 people. The study has not been peer-reviewed.

The results indicated “a potential boost strategy” for people primed with inactivated Covid-19 vaccines, said the team, which included scientists from the Jiangsu provincial centre for disease control and prevention, the Chinese military’s top epidemiologist and virologist Chen Wei and CanSino Biologics employees. They posted the results on the platform Preprints with The Lancet last week.

Tianjin-based CanSino said the needle free, non-invasive treatment aimed to provide quick, regular and mass-scale protection with easy administration.

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China considers mixing Covid-19 vaccine types to boost effectiveness

China’s mass vaccination campaign has relied heavily on domestically developed inactivated shots from Sinopharm and Sinovac, both approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization and widely used by developing countries.

Beijing has yet to approve heterologous vaccination, or administering a different vaccine to the original regimen. If approved, the CanSino Covid-19 vaccine is the most likely product to be used because it is the only non-inactivated Covid-19 vaccine approved for general launch in the country, a prerequisite for mixing and matching vaccines.