Benefits of a Prime-Only mRNA Vaccine for Pandemic Preparedness

A major advantage of using a cytokine adjuvant, like GM-CSF, is the ability to boost the immunogenicity of a single dose of vaccine.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people were required to get two doses of the mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech. This meant more material was needed for manufacturing, more storage space, and people needed to deal with initial side effects of immunizations twice within a span of one month.

Combined Therapeutics has shown in mice that a single dose of an mRNA formulation encoding for GM-CSF (with a Multi-Organ Protection [MOP] sequence) when mixed with Flublok (a recombinant protein vaccine from Sanofi) produces similar levels of neutralizing antibodies compared to a multi-dose prime/boost regimen of Flublok alone.

This shows the potential of mRNA adjuvants to improve vaccine technology by reducing manufacturing needs and improving overall patient care. And due to the rapid ability to design and manufacture mRNA vaccines, these adjuvanted mRNA MOP vaccines are possible candidates for pandemic preparedness for situations similar to COVID-19 and possible bird flu (H5) risks.