Moderna Inc has been carrying out a study of a new COVID-19
vaccine candidate that it is testing for being stored and shipped in
refrigerators instead of freezers, hence making the vaccine easier to
distribute. The company recently administered the first dose of the vaccine to
a participant in an early stage of its testing.
According to Moderna, this new COVID-19 vaccine would be particularly useful in developing countries where problems with supply chain potentially hinder vaccination drives.
Moderna’s research is further going to assess the safety and
immunogenicity of the next-generation COVID-19 vaccine, called mRNA-1283, at
three dose levels. It will be given to healthy adults as a single dose or in
two doses 28 days apart.
Moderna also plans to evaluate mRNA-1283 as a potential
booster shot in future research and announced that mRNA-1283 will be tested in two
trials: as a variant-specific shot, as well as a multivalent shot.
