What happened
Like the broader stock market, Ocugen (NASDAQ:OCGN) shares ticked up well shy of 1% on Wednesday. The biotech had some good news to report about the coronavirus vaccine that it’s licensing, but this didn’t move the needle much for investors.
So what
This morning, Ocugen happily announced that the vaccine Covaxin did well in a clinical study conducted at Emory University in Georgia. The findings indicate that a Covaxin booster, given to people who had previously undergone the standard two-dose regime of the vaccine, neutralized the delta and omicron variants of the coronavirus. It did the same against variants of concern alpha, beta, zeta, and kappa.
Image source: Getty Images.
Ocugen said that more than 90% of the study’s subjects showed neutralizing antibodies.
“These results show how a broad-spectrum vaccine has the potential ability to address ever-shifting public health challenges such as new variants and mutations,” CEO Shankar Musunuri was quoted as saying.
Covaxin is being developed by India’s Bharat Biotech; Ocugen holds the North American commercial rights to the vaccine. It’s currently under review by the Food and Drug Administration for Emergency Use Authorization, and as such it is not one of the three vaccines currently approved or authorized by the American regulator.
Now what
While the new study bolsters Covaxin’s status as an efficacious weapon in the fight against the coronavirus, Ocugen is still rather behind the pack in the vaccine race.
Other jabs have taken what seems to be a permanent lead — most notably Comirnaty from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its partner BioNTech — and that’s not likely to change no matter how many variants are blocked by Covaxin.
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