Johnson & Johnson (the Company) announced preliminary results from an independent study, including a subset of participants from the Janssen-sponsored COV2008 study, conducted by Dan Barouch, M.D., Ph.D., et al. of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), which showed that a booster shot of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine (Ad26.COV2.S), administered at six months after a two-dose primary regimen of BNT162b2, increased both antibody and T-cell responses. These results demonstrate the potential benefits of heterologous boosting (mix-and-match). The article describing these results have been posted on medRxiv.
“There is early evidence to suggest that a mix-and-match boosting approach may provide individuals with different immune responses against COVID-19 than a homologous boosting approach,” said Dan Barouch, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at BIDMC. “In this preliminary study, when a booster dose of Ad26.COV2.S was given to individuals six months after a primary regimen with the BNT162b2 vaccine, there was a comparable increase of antibody responses at week four following the boost and a greater increase of CD8+ T-cell responses with Ad26.COV2.S compared with BNT162b2.”
“These results provide valuable scientific insights for our vaccine when used as a mix-and-match booster and can help inform boosting strategies with the goal to curb the pandemic,” said Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., Global Head, Janssen Research & Development, Johnson & Johnson. “These data add to the growing body of evidence demonstrating that a mix-and-match booster dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine successfully increases humoral responses and cellular responses against the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, as well as the Beta and Delta variants.”
These Phase 2 data are reinforced by preliminary results from the UK COV-BOOST clinical study published in The Lancet, which demonstrated that following primary vaccination with two doses of either BNT162b2 (n=106) or ChAdOx1 nCov-19 (n=108), a booster dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine increased both antibody and T-cell responses COV2008