Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

Response With Three in Kids

Pfizer and BioNTech have announced that their SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, given in a three-dose regimen, leads to a strong immune response among small children, the Washington Post reports.

According to the companies, small children between the ages of 6 months to just under 5 years old who received the three doses had immune responses similar to teenagers and young adults after they received a second dose. The companies further say that the vaccine was well tolerated by children and that it had an 80 percent efficacy during the Omicron wave, though the efficacy analysis was based on early data. The doses given to the young children was a third of that given to adults and even older children and adolescents.

The companies had reported in December that two doses of their vaccine did not generate the needed immune response among two-to-four year olds, which led them to test a third dose of the vaccine. That also delayed their timeline for seeking emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration, as the agency decided to wait until additional data was available.

According to CNN, Pfizer and BioNTech plan to submit these new data to the FDA this week.

Filed under

The Scan

ChatGPT Does As Well As Humans Answering Genetics Questions, Study Finds

Researchers in the European Journal of Human Genetics had ChatGPT answer genetics-related questions, finding it was about 68 percent accurate, but sometimes gave different answers to the same question.

Sequencing Analysis Examines Gene Regulatory Networks of Honeybee Soldier, Forager Brains

Researchers in Nature Ecology & Evolution find gene regulatory network differences between soldiers and foragers, suggesting bees can take on either role.

Analysis of Ashkenazi Jewish Cohort Uncovers New Genetic Loci Linked to Alzheimer's Disease

The study in Alzheimer's & Dementia highlighted known genes, but also novel ones with biological ties to Alzheimer's disease.

Tara Pacific Expedition Project Team Finds High Diversity Within Coral Reef Microbiome

In papers appearing in Nature Communications and elsewhere, the team reports on findings from the two-year excursion examining coral reefs.