Even as vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers plow a path to mar­ket for Omi­cron-spe­cif­ic boost­er shots this fall, NI­AID di­rec­tor An­tho­ny Fau­ci’s mes­sage is clear: “Our job is not done.”

Fau­ci, who al­so serves as chief med­ical ad­vi­sor to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, took the White House podi­um on Tues­day to of­fer a glimpse at where next-gen­er­a­tion vac­cines are head­ed — specif­i­cal­ly high­light­ing the need for pan-coro­n­avirus can­di­dates and mu­cos­al op­tions that can be ad­min­is­tered in­tranasal­ly.

“In­no­v­a­tive ap­proach­es are clear­ly need­ed to in­duce broad and durable pro­tec­tion against coro­n­avirus­es known and un­known,” he said.

At the end of last month, the FDA rec­om­mend­ed that vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers like Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na move for­ward with Omi­cron-spe­cif­ic for­mu­la­tions, which may be avail­able in ear­ly- to mid-fall.

Thanks to cur­rent vac­cines, we’ve avert­ed well over two mil­lion deaths and about a tril­lion dol­lars in health­care costs, Fau­ci said. How­ev­er, vac­cine de­vel­op­ment is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed, as we’re now see­ing “sub­lin­eages of sub­lin­eages” of Covid vari­ants.

“These in­jectable vac­cines do a great job at pre­vent­ing se­vere dis­ease, but they do lit­tle to pre­vent in­fec­tion and trans­mis­sion, and trans­mis­sion is the en­gine of vari­ant evo­lu­tion,” said Mar­tin Moore, CSO and co­founder of Meis­sa Vac­cines.

Down the road, Fau­ci ad­vo­cat­ed for pan-coro­n­avirus vac­cines, or mu­cos­al op­tions that could po­ten­tial­ly stop trans­mis­sion in its tracks.

“When you have a mu­cos­al, and in this case, in­tranasal, what you do is you stim­u­late at the lo­cal lev­el,” Fau­ci said dur­ing the sum­mit, which was broad­cast live on Zoom. “The goal of that is not on­ly to pro­tect against dis­ease, but to pro­tect against ac­qui­si­tion and by ac­qui­si­tion, trans­mis­sion. And that’s re­al­ly the holy grail.”

Akiko Iwasa­ki

Cur­rent vac­cines in­duce ro­bust sys­temic im­mune re­spons­es, but do not in­duce a mu­cos­al re­sponse, ac­cord­ing to Akiko Iwasa­ki, an im­munol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. She’s al­so the co-founder of Xanadu Bio, a Yale spin­out look­ing to bring an in­tranasal Covid can­di­date in­to the clin­ic. Mu­cos­al vac­cines are de­signed to pre­vent a virus from ever get­ting to a host cell, like putting a guard out­side your house to pro­tect from in­vaders, Iwasa­ki said.

Iwasa­ki re­cent­ly co-au­thored a pa­per in Sci­ence Im­munol­o­gy along­side Scripps Re­search Trans­la­tion­al In­sti­tute founder Er­ic Topol that ad­vo­cates for an ac­cel­er­at­ed ini­tia­tive for in­tranasal Covid-19 vac­cines, sim­i­lar to Op­er­a­tion Warp Speed.

“We know from 200 years of vac­ci­nol­o­gy … that vac­cines that mim­ic nat­ur­al in­fec­tion tend to work best,” Moore said. “No one here to­day can tell you that mu­cos­al COVID vac­cines work, we’re not there yet. We need clin­i­cal ef­fi­ca­cy da­ta to an­swer that ques­tion, and that’s why we’re here.”

Paul Bur­ton

Man­u­fac­tur­ing is al­so “a key part of the fu­ture,” Mod­er­na’s CMO Paul Bur­ton said at the sum­mit, adding that the com­pa­ny has re­cent­ly struck deals to build new plants and R&D sites in Aus­tralia, the Unit­ed King­dom, Cana­da and Kenya.

“We have to con­tin­ue these dis­cus­sions, con­tin­ue these col­lab­o­ra­tions to in­still con­fi­dence,” Bur­ton said. “Get­ting that con­fi­dence and then the abil­i­ty to get these shots made in coun­tries and in­to peo­ple’s arms I think is how we’re go­ing to con­tin­ue to get out of the pan­dem­ic.”

Pfiz­er bio­phar­ma group pres­i­dent An­gela Hwang added that the de­vel­op­ers con­tin­ue to im­ple­ment lessons learned from the pan­dem­ic to make the process more ef­fi­cient.

“Prob­a­bly two and a half bil­lion peo­ple have re­ceived the Pfiz­er vac­cine,” she said. “That’s an in­cred­i­ble wealth of re­al world ev­i­dence that we’re sit­ting on. And so I think that we have a great op­por­tu­ni­ty, hav­ing that strong depth and breadth of da­ta, to use that to al­so help us to un­der­stand, how can we de­sign new ther­a­pies?”

*A cor­rec­tion has been made to the at­tri­bu­tion of two quotes by Mar­tin Moore.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.

A public T cell biotech’s chief executive has decided to leave the company.

TScan Therapeutics said Friday morning that CEO David Southwell stepped down earlier this week, leaving both his chief executive and board member roles. Filling in is Gavin MacBeath, the company’s CSO and COO. He became the acting CEO on Tuesday, and will continue to remain CSO and COO, TScan’s announcement read.