Researchers developing the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine have

identified biomarkers that can help to predict whether someone will be protected
by the jab they receive.

The team at the University of Oxford, UK, identified a ‘correlate of protection’

from the immune responses of trial participants — the first found by any COVID-
19 vaccine developer. Identifying such blood markers, scientists say, will improve
existing vaccines and speed the development of new ones by reducing the need for
costly large-scale efficacy trials.

“We would like to have an antibody measure that is a reliable guide to protection
because it could speed up the licensure of new vaccines,” says David Goldblatt, a
vaccinologist at University College London.

Scientists zero in on long-sought marker of COVID-vaccine efficacy

New formulations of influenza vaccines, for instance, are generally judged by

whether they trigger a strong enough antibody response against a viral protein in a
relatively small number of people, instead of in large trials that look for reductions
in rates of infection. Researchers and regulators hope to do the same with COVID-
19 vaccines.

“The power of a correlate in vaccines is profound,” says Dan Barouch, director of

the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center in Boston, Massachusetts. “If there’s a reliable correlate, then it can be used
in clinical trials to make decisions as to what vaccines are likely to work, what
form of vaccines are likely to work, or how durable the vaccines are going to be.”

The findings are reported in a preprint study posted to medRxiv on 24 June 1.

Searching for markers

Correlates of protection are typically determined by comparing the immune
responses of trial participants who were protected by a vaccine to those of
‘breakthrough cases’ — volunteers who got a vaccine but still became infected.

But owing to the high efficacy of many COVID-19 vaccines, it has taken longer
than expected for developers to determine markers of vaccine protection on the
basis of breakthrough cases, says Peter Dull, deputy director for Integrated Clinical
Vaccine Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle,
Washington.