Could Biotech ETFs Get Another Boost From JNJ News?

This has been a pivotal week for biotech news, as Johnson & Johnson said Wednesday that a booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine generated a promising immune response in early stage clinical trials. This follows the Monday news that the FDA fully approved the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, making it the first vaccine in the U.S. to be awarded such a designation beyond emergency use.

J&J’s current vaccine requires only a single dose, whereupon recipients are considered fully vaccinated 14 days after receiving the injection, making it potentially more convenient, though somewhat less effective in clinical trials than the other vaccine candidates. J&J announced Wednesday that vaccine trial participants between ages 18 and 55, who received a booster dose of the shot after taking the single dose injection, created virus-fighting antibodies “nine-fold higher” than those observed after a month following only a single dose.

“We have established that a single shot of our COVID-19 vaccine generates strong and robust immune responses that are durable and persistent through eight months,” Dr. Mathai Mammen, head of research and development at J&J’s Janssen vaccine arm, said in a statement.

The FDA first granted Emergency Use Authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine via the Pfizer vaccine back in December. Amid the drive to get America vaccinated, over 204 million Pfizer shots have been given, based on data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Moderna and J&J followed shortly after, with J&J rolling out in March.

J&J was unique, in that it was a single does injection and had less stringent storage requirements than the competing vaccines.

The J&J vaccine can be stored in normal refrigerators, while the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines need to be stored at sub-freezing temperatures.

The rollout was not without incident, however, as the J&J vaccine was paused for issues with clotting in some women a short time after use began.

“I think the decision was a very pragmatic one, and a very transparent one, a very clear one, and a correct one,” said Naor Bar-Zeev, a statistical epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s a real risk and it’s a serious event if it occurs. But it’s very unlikely to occur.”

“Had we had an endless supply of any vaccine, then of course it would be ideal for younger women to receive vaccines that have not been found to be associated with clotting,” Bar-Zeev said. “But in the absence of that reality it is still the right decision for any given woman who is considering her own risk benefit-risk balance.”

The full FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine and the J&J booster news arrive at a critical time, as the number of coronavirus infections has been ramping up across the nation.

Louisiana recorded an average of 126 cases per 100,000 residents as of Sunday, which equates to over three times the national average, while Mississippi and Florida respectively averaged 110 and 101 cases per 100,000 residents, according to CDC data.

“We’re in the middle of the summer, people are gathering again with people, they’re in large groups, the vaccine has given a false sense of security in some ways to people, and they forget,” Dr. Perry Halkitis, dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health, told CNBC in an interview.

While the new J&J data is exciting, the company’s press release did not discuss the booster shots’ potential impact on the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, or on safety in general.