AZN AstraZeneca PLC

By Georgi Kantchev in Moscow and Jenny Strasburg in London 

AstraZeneca PLC will test whether a combination of its Covid-19 vaccine and Russia's Sputnik V shot can boost effectiveness in fighting Covid-19 as part of broadening efforts to slow the global spread of the virus.

In an agreement announced Friday, the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed jointly with the University of Oxford, would use one of Sputnik V's two components, known as adenoviral vectors, in a clinical trial. The trial is due to begin later this month, according to a statement from Russia's sovereign-wealth fund, which has backed Sputnik V.

The trial could help raise the international profile of Russia's vaccine, which has drawn skepticism from Western scientists and politicians for its speedy approval ahead of large-scale clinical trials in August. Moscow has sold Sputnik V to dozens of countries, including Brazil, India and Mexico.

AstraZeneca's decision "may offer a route to markets that [Russia] would otherwise be unable to access," said Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading in the U.K.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine -- the cheapest of the West's front-runner shots and the one with the widest global distribution plans -- has shown to be between 62% and 90% effective depending on dosage, with the majority of trial participants at the lower end of the range. The vaccine partners said this week they would ask the U.K. and other countries for emergency-use authorization of the vaccine, and hope to secure authorization in the U.K. within weeks.

In Russia, AstraZeneca has a deal with local company R-Pharm Group for the production of one billion doses of its vaccine, Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said last month. That Russian production could be extended into 2022, and is in addition to the roughly three billion doses AstraZeneca has agreed to make world-wide in 2021, assuming regulators authorize the vaccine.

Results from clinical trials showed that Sputnik V, which was developed by Moscow's state-run Gamaleya Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, was more than 90% effective in protecting people from Covid-19. Russia began rolling it out to its population on Saturday but manufacturing problems have hobbled plans for a speedy mass vaccination campaign. With more than 2.5 million infections nationwide, Russia has the world's fourth-largest case load after the U.S., India and Brazil.

Some scientists have called for the testing of combinations of vaccine technologies to understand if they could increase effectiveness.

AstraZeneca noted Friday that clinical trials are planned in the U.K. combining more traditional vaccine technology with a new technology that leverages mRNA, short for the molecular couriers called messenger RNA that carry genetic instructions to cells. The mRNA technology is behind the vaccine made by Pfizer Inc. and Germany's BioNTech SE, the first Western-authorized Covid-19 shot and which the U.K. began administering this week. The vaccine is expected to be approved in the U.S. as soon as Friday.

It wasn't clear how advanced the U.K.'s plans were to match different vaccines. But the chief executive of BioNTech strongly advised against efforts to combine the company's vaccine with others.

"This not endorsed by us," Ugur Sahin said. "We are trying to clarify why this is happening, but it is something we cannot possibly recommend."

The shot developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca works like a more traditional vaccine, introducing a weakened cold virus found in chimpanzees into the body to trigger immunity. Sputnik V is also a two-shot vaccine based on the adenovirus, one commonly found in humans. It uses two types of the virus for its first and second shot. AstraZeneca will use one of them for its clinical trial, the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the sovereign-wealth fund, said Friday.

Combining various vaccine components -- after extensive testing -- is common practice to improve antibody response, experts said. Health-care providers for years have combined multiple childhood vaccines into a single shot.

With Covid-19, researchers want to understand whether mixing different shots can make the first shot of a two-dose regimen better at prepping the body for the second dose. The hope is that additional combinations of shots can provide strong, lasting immunity without causing additional serious side effects, experts say.

At the same time, scientists want to watch closely for changes in side effects from mixing technologies and vaccines as there is still little known about how long the immunity from vaccines lasts, and that different vaccines will work better in different groups depending on age, underlying health conditions and other factors, according to experts.

Prof. Jones said that in the case of AstraZeneca and Sputnik V, the combination should be straightforward since both are based on the adenovirus.

"But if you were combining different vaccines you would have to formally consider the possibility that the adverse effects, even if mild, were additive," he said.

--Bojan Pancevski contributed to this article.

Write to Georgi Kantchev at georgi.kantchev@wsj.com and Jenny Strasburg at jenny.strasburg@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 11, 2020 11:29 ET (16:29 GMT)

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